Thursday, May 21, 2009

Texting

Yea, tho frm th frgd nrthlnds he hd cm, yt in th lng f teh ntn hd he md hs hme. & so did it cm to pss tht whn 1ce mr he wnt thru a lnd of rsnbl tmprtr he ws frzn in an icbrg 4 abt a yr.

And lo, when the iceberg thawed the world was changed. People were staring into strange little boxes and typing into keyboards which were way too small for their fingers. And they left so many letters out of their words that making sense of all they said became nigh-impossible. Plus there was some weird red, white and blue shield, but we won’t concern ourselves with that. And so he soldiered on.

I would say that my thoughts on texting and driving after reading the article are about the same as my thoughts on texting and driving before reading the article. Driving is serious business, life-or-death business really and it makes no sense to distract yourself during that process.

No, I have never sent a text message. And when I receive them it is my habit to ignore them. But I have always felt that I could should the occasion call for it, and having looked through this module and the video and descriptions therein I find it still more likely. The mechanics of texting seem largely straightforward.

The jargon is a somewhat bigger hurdle. The website presented in this exercise is one workable tool for managing that hurdle. In addition I manage to maintain communication with enough folks that actually use said jargon that I’m not approaching it entirely flat-footed.