Bix dot Blog

I think that Matt Baer conflates the ease, speed, and ubiquity of text communication with its relative informational or emotional payloads and comprehensibility. The idea that we might have let ourselves slip into a social world where, as he sees it, “velocity” reigns isn’t the same as the idea that the forms themselves—including their accompanying linguistic ones—somehow are deficient of meaning. This reaction to Baer’s post likely emerges in part from having only just recently read Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet and Joanne McNeil’s Lurking, each of which has its own things to say on such matters.