[tt] Economist: Homo mobilis

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Homo mobilis
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=10950487
Apr 10th 2008

SHERRY TURKLE, the psychologist at MIT who studies the nexus between
people and gadgets, believes that the tools of mobility are leading
to "the emergence of a new type of person". In the distant,
landline-dominated past, she says, people thought: "I have a feeling
so I want to make a call." Young people today, including Ms Turkle's
teenage daughter, seem to be thinking instead: "I want to have a
feeling, so I need to make a call." What she means is that there is
something inorganic, derivative and inauthentic about a lot of
mobile communication. As a species, Ms Turkle thinks, we run the
risk of letting the permanent wireless social clouds that surround
us steal part of our nature.

Is that a bit rich? Certainly, tools have always played a big part
in defining human nature. Homo habilis, "handy man", is considered
the first species in our genus, surviving until about 1.6m years
ago, because he used primitive tools made from stone or bone. Homo
erectus, "upright man", got his name from his stature, but his
crucial innovation was to tame fire for his use. And whether or not
Homo sapiens, "wise man", entirely lives up to his name, he has
achieved astonishing breakthroughs both in hardware (eg, the wheel)
and software (eg, language).

If researchers in ivory towers now debate the arrival of Homo
mobilis, their tongue is only partially in their cheek. Once again
the biggest shift seems to involve language, and by implication
thought and feeling. That major linguistic change is afoot is clear
to anybody who has been around young people almost anywhere in the
world. Entire subcultures now define themselves primarily or
exclusively through their chosen text-messaging or instant-messaging
argot.

Richard Ling, for instance, has studied a teenage fad in Norway that
had kids substituting the letter "z" for "s" in Norwegian words,
yielding spellings such as "koz" or "klemz", both meaning "hug".
This substitution defined, as Mr Ling puts it, "middle-class
teenyboppers"--until a rap band ridiculed the trend, thus killing it
off. The teens immediately took to writing their text messages and
e-mails in pidgin Swedish. Among this group of Norwegians, a Swedish
word such as "kramar" (again, hugs) became "krämmar". Both the "z"
endings and the pidgin Swedish showed up only in electronic media,
never in spoken language.

So far, that suggests nothing more than a new variant of traditional
in-group markers such as tattoos or Ivy-League class rings. But
Naomi Baron, a linguist at American University in Washington, DC,
and author of "Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World",
sees more worrying trends. Society's attitude towards language has
changed, she thinks. For about 250 years, the consensus in Western
societies has been that grammar, syntax and spelling matter, and
that rules have to be observed. That consensus now appears to be at
risk.

In all electronic media, especially when typed on the small screens
of mobile handsets, absolutely anything, linguistically speaking,
seems to go. Apostrophes that once distinguished between "its" and
"it's" seem quaint and arbitrary. Entire words and sentences now
compose themselves with the ever-present "autofill" and spell-check
features, which adolescents increasingly regard as a virtual Samuel
Johnson or Konrad Duden.

The academically and politically correct response is to welcome this
trend with open arms. Language, after all, appears only to be
returning to its natural and healthy state of flux. When Geoffrey
Chaucer was writing in the 14th century there were no set spelling
rules, but he managed to compose interesting texts nonetheless. For
all we know, today's digital and mobile world might be teeming with
potential Chaucers.

Ms Baron will have none of it. Spelling is in decline today, she
thinks, not because of the rich diversity of dialects, as in
Chaucer's day, but because the dominant mindset of nomadic culture
is that language does not matter. We are entering, as she puts is,
an age of "linguistic whateverism". One reason is that people today
are writing vastly larger amounts of text than ever before, and "the
more we write online, the worse writers we become." In the eras of
quills, pens or even manual typewriters it was hard to write a lot,
so people took time and care in clarifying their thoughts. Many
nomads today are convinced that they don't have the time to think
and care, so they concentrate on speed alone.

Because language is the primary vehicle for thought, this has
consequences. Already, Ms Baron detects a new and widespread
intellectual torpor among her students. Young Americans used to cut
corners before an exam on "Hamlet" by reading the CliffsNotes.
Teachers hated them, but they were pedagogic wonders compared with
today's method of Googling the passage in question, then using the
computer's "find" function to get to the exact snippet. Ms Baron
thinks that these days her students even think in snippets, which is
to say incoherently. And that is how they write essays. Having
internalised the new whateverism, they launch in and stumble
through, with nary a thought for what they actually want to say.

This criticism dovetails strikingly with what other sociologists and
psychologists are observing in the interpersonal behaviour of some
nomads. Older people use their mobile phones to "micro-co-ordinate"
with partners during the day in order to run their errands more
efficiently and perhaps to spend more time together as a result. But
many younger people, who have never known paper diaries or an
unconnected world, micro-co-ordinate in order to avoid committing
themselves to any fixed meeting time, location or person at all.
After all, a better opportunity might yet present itself.

The concern, therefore, is that young nomads not only write without
thinking or leave home in the morning without planning but also
enter relationships without tying themselves down. Large parts of
human interaction, especially the awkward subjects of rowing and
separating, can now be relegated to virtual, as opposed to physical,
interaction. A worrying trend in recent years has been adolescents'
practice of dumping their lovers by text message or, worse, by
changing the status of their Facebook profile from "in a
relationship" to "single". This is efficient and instantaneous, but
potentially traumatic.

Oh evolve!

Much of this pessimism is probably overblown. Homo sapiens has been
creating technological curses throughout history, and has so far
managed to cope with every challenge thrown up. Only a few decades
ago the prevailing worry was that television, the reigning medium at
the time, was creating a generation of unimaginative couch potatoes,
if not intellectual vegetables. That description is quite the
opposite of what youth culture has in fact become in today's era of
the internet and nomadism. Even if young people today read the Iliad
and Shakespeare only in snippets, if at all, says Manuel Castells at
the University of Southern California, they are also creating an
artistic culture more vibrant and imaginative than arguably any that
has preceded it. The common name for this genre is "mash-up
culture", but that does not do it justice. Today's creative types do
more than stitch together ("mash up") snippets. They forge new
combinations almost as neurons form synapses to create new thoughts.

As for the things that can come between people, technology is
certainly one of them. So it has been since a spear missed the
mammoth and hit a tribesman. Every technology has created new excess
and silliness. In time, each silliness has produced its own backlash
and subsequent adjustment. At the simplest level, it is reasonable
to assume that Homo sapiens, having invented the "on" button, will
discover the "off" button as well.