Internet communication can truly have its own language. Someone’s “j/k” might leave you “ROFL,” or their “brb” can leave you hanging. As mobile phone and Internet services become more and more integrated, some people are again sounding the alarm about the potential degeneration of language entailed in using Internet shorthand.

As recently as fifty years ago, close friends, even in the same city, would write letters to each other as a primary form of communication. Maybe there is something about having to fill a blank page that lends itself to prose that is sometimes flowery, sometimes overwritten, and sometimes boring, but always in the individual voice of that person. With the cold glare of a mobile phone screen, it certainly seems appropriate to sometimes use terse abbreviations as “omg” and “thx” instead of their proper English equivalents.

One interesting argument made about this style of communication is that it reduces phrases that have a strong emotional content or meaning to cliches. For instance, think about the common phrase “LOL,” which stands for “laughing out loud.” Think of the act of reading a letter or a book, and actually throwing your head back with laughter. While this was for sure originally the intent of this shorthand, “LOL” is now frequently used to acknowledge anything funny said in an Internet or wireless Internet conversation. This is because communication over the Internet requires a sort of truncation of what one is trying to express, since one has to go through the extra step of filtering one’s thoughts through a keyboard instead of naturally communicating something directly to another person. Are we actually becoming more cold and computer-like now that we don’t have to take the time to write out what we feel in the English language?

Many people will say that Internet speak is indeed now part of our language, and we are just finding different ways to express the same emotions. Maybe the emotion truly implied by an “LOL” is now expressed by an “OMG LOL” or something similar. Language is always in a state of flux, with new words entering and leaving the language all the time. Internet speak could be something that actually broadens the possibilities of human expression, instead of limiting them, especially as mobile broadband service means that more and more of us are connected to the Internet all the time.

Similarly, other people say that Internet speak is meant to hide the meanings of conversations to outsiders. Why would one say “j/k” when one could just say “joke” instead? Again, however, languages are always changing. Human beings seem to need new words to interact with new elements of their environment, and the dawn of 4G and other fast wireless services is certainly an important development. Maybe using Internet speak such as “j/k” is a subtle way of acknowledging that real jokes are told and shared offline. There is a strong argument to be made that Internet shorthand is a way of reminding us that our conversation is taking place in the virtual world, without denying that there is more communication to be had among friends in person.

By: Jason Tandle

Americans are living in an ever-increasingly fast-paced world. A few short decades ago, if a bombing happened half way around the world, you might here about it in a few days in a story in the local newspaper that was filed by a foreign correspondent thousands of miles away through a wire-system. Now, you will probably hear about such a terrible happening within hours of its occurrence, perhaps even minutes depending on the location and the type of event, its specific details, and its location. You will turn on your brand new flat screen television or log onto wireless Internet with your home laptop and there it will be: a headline alerting you of what has just happened in Pakistan, in France, or in Brazil.

More and more Americans are getting their news this way every single day. They no longer rely on the paper that flops onto their doorstep all wrapped in plastic every day at 6 in the morning to get their news. Often, these traditional sources of media offer too little information too late: by the time the 1000-world print article comes out, you could have watched hours of TV coverage on the local cable news network or have read through five updates and a fair amount of analysis on the web with wireless Internet. Why pay for something slower and less up-to-date when you could get the fastest, newest information for free when you go online with wireless Internet?

That’s right: not only do you access information much faster with wireless Internet and television than you do with traditional print media, but you end up saving a lot of money as well! This is because the vast majority of websites out there allow Internet users to access their content for free. Whether you want to pursue the op-ed pages of the New York Times, read a pop-culture oriented blog like Gawker, or catch up on some human-interest stories that will tug at your heartstrings on Yahoo! News, you are unlikely to have to drop a dime on any of it. There are a few websites that compel users to pay for access, such as the Wall Street Journal, but these hold-outs are becoming the exception. In most cases, Americans are bypassing the pay services and finding ways to get their news for free.

Yet another great advantage of checking your news with an Internet device such as your 4G phone (which should give you access online in just about any location across the country) is the fact that you can share the news easily with your family and friends. If you see a story that analyzes life in North Korea, you might send it on to your coworker with whom you always talk politics. If you see an article about a new tax law that might be passed in your home state, you can forward it to your parents or your friends who might still live there so that they can stay in the loop. These people will reciprocate by sending you links to articles as well!

By: Jason Tandle

The American newspaper has been dying a slow death that is quite painful to watch for the past decade, if not longer. The advent of wireless Internet and its related technologies have meant that advertising dollars are being spent online. Very few companies are willing to spend money on print ads anymore. And unfortunately, news organizations have not found a way to make their websites profitable. This is for a number of reasons. The existence and popularity of both personal and organizational blogs that are free to the public have made it virtually impossible for newspapers to try to charge for their content. In most cases, if readers had to pay to get their news online on certain websites, they would probably just go to the next best thing that will give them similar information for free. The other issue is that they just do not make as much money advertising online for whatever reason. These days, the trend is to ever more user-specific ads on wireless Internet, with companies tracking what websites a person visits in order to target ads to their needs. But revenue levels have failed to meet their print-only days.

You might be wondering, “well, what’s so bad about newspapers dying? Wireless Internet has simply changed the game, and now everyone gets their content for free. How is that not a good thing?” The truth is, getting information for free could be an amazing development in the news world. But the sad thing is when you consider the overall quality of that information that is being obtained for nothing. This is because as newspapers have ceased to become profitable in their print forms, they have had to lay off loads of staff. They just cannot afford to maintain a full newsroom. This means that there are fewer people to do research, to fact check, to develop story ideas, to work on a project for a longer period of time. Only two newspapers in the United States have reporters in Iraq, the New York Times and the Washington Post. The rest of the country simply recycles whatever they hear from these two newspapers, or they rely on the Associated Press.

So, if you want good information, where can you turn? Wireless Internet does provide you with some options. There are certain blogs that do their own research, and that are probably worth reading. The main thing to consider is where the blogs are getting their information. Sometimes this kind of writing can be incredibly biased and downright argumentative. In these cases, it is easy to tell that what you are getting is not necessarily straightforward information. But in other cases, writing you will encounter via wireless Internet will appear to be soberly written and factual. In these cases, it might be more difficult to detect the agenda buried in the prose.

Seek out these novel sources of information. And, if you can, it doesn’t hurt to maybe pay for something every once in a while. Buy a magazine subscription, or pay for some content online.

By: Jason Tandle