The Dying Art of Conversation
Texting is replacing talking as the preferred form of communication?
According to a recent survey by OpenMarket, 75 percent of millennials chose texting over talking when given the choice between being able only to text versus call on their mobile phone.
To be sure, the powerful digital devices almost everyone is carrying around these days have changed the art of human conversation and the way we relate to each other — and not for the better.
When I was in high school many years ago, my mother encouraged me to take a typewriting course, thinking it would benefit me in my working life — and, boy, did it benefit me as a writer!
I don’t know how many words I can type per minute, but I’m able to put my thoughts onto the screen rapidly by using almost all my fingers on the keyboard.
The arrangement of the keys on a computer keypad is a legacy of the typewriter, which was invented in the 1870s.
The typewriter eventually replaced messy quill pens and paper pads and greatly improved the efficiency of the businesspeople and writers who learned how to use it.
Now we are abandoning an 1870s invention to revert to text messages that we awkwardly compose with opposable thumbs.
Mark Twain used his typewriter to create long, eloquent sentences in his memoir “Life on the Mississippi,” but now humans use texting to bastardize the human language with abbreviated statements that would embarrass a Neanderthal.
“Thag no like text. LOL. :)”
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Copyright 2021 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
