OTTOMH: Some musings on technology and communication

Elyse Sanchez, Friday, March 2, 2007 @ 3:15 pm

Since the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg’s press enabled the production and distribution of printed materials to the masses, technology has influenced not only our means of communication, but often, the very medium itself: language. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of version 1.0 of Powerpoint (interestingly, initially designed for the Apple Macintosh). Still supporting an older technology, the early releases of Powerpoint simply created pages to be used for overhead transparencies. The first Windows-based version appeared in 1990, and, in the view of Edward Tufte, quickly grew into a ubiquitous and malevolent influence that formulated new cognitive and aesthetic models constructed of a decontextualized, sequential series of choppy phrases and an appetite for “smarmy, chaotic, incoherent chartjunk” graphics.

The Web has provided a potentially universal platform for communication—a virtual printing press—and has even more strongly shaped the way we think, communicate, and even think about communicating.

The explosion of community sites, blogs and message boards have inspired multitudes of nascent authors to reach out and express themselves. E-mails not only function as direct communication, but are forwarded large-scale as electronic entertainment. The easy entry into this environment has relaxed the standards of formal written communication, much to the annoyance of “grammar queens” who zealously police the online world, pouncing upon errors in spelling and syntax. (Full disclosure: Former English teacher here.)

A burgeoning glossary of acronyms and emoticons have been developed to accommodate technology, whether to speed up online chat to approach the speed of actual verbal conversation, or to accommodate the small canvas of the text message. To a degree, this is Powerpoint regimentation redux: do so many people really LOL at the slightest suggestion of humor?

A recent AP article notes that Web newspeak has extended into the naming of products (think flickr) and on to websites and products themselves, which are increasingly boasting names derived from newly invented words: ikbis, joost, Woomp!, to reference only a few.

To me, the most moving example of the power of technology to change communication for the better concerns Amanda Baggs, a severely autistic woman who found her voice in the digital world. Her eloquent writings express the intelligence and sense of humor that she is unable to convey in verbal communication. Read her blog and enter a world that was previously inaccessible to outsiders.

user experience design

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