From LO to LOL

It is 40 years ago, almost to the day, that the internet made its first connection. On 29 October 1969, a computer in the University of California connected with one several hundred miles away in the Stanford Research Institute, just long enough to receive the message ‘LO’. (It was meant to be ‘LOGIN’, but the system crashed before the ‘G’ could be typed.)

The rate at which the internet and related technologies have developed since that fateful day is positively dizzying: from science fiction to something tentatively toyed with by a very few, to a ubiquitous part of life for the vast majority in a few decades. Increasingly frequently this is our chosen method of communication  – in work and out – to the point where the future of a national institution like the postal service is threatened.

But could our relationship with language be threatened too? The question does keep rearing its worried head over the possibilities of the future: illiterate children? Txt spk @ work? Robot computers marking exam papers?

What’s certain is that there will be an effect of some kind. After all, use of the word ‘hello’ as the greeting we unthinkingly use originated when Thomas Edison declared it the clearest way of answering the telephone.   Interestingly, in 2003 it was reported that traditional greetings like ‘hello’ would soon become obsolete, replaced (as they often are in texts and email) with ‘globespeak’ alternatives, such as ‘hey’, ‘howdy’ and ‘g’day’. This, if true, would effectively bring the life of ‘hello’ full circle: both created for and destroyed by the rise of a new technology. Although we probably needn’t sound its death knell quite yet.

Then, of course, there’s Microsoft: it may rule the world, but to what extent does it rule our words? We are all guilty of relying more and more heavily on Word’s varicoloured squiggly lines and AutoCorrect function to correct our mistakes, but we are all also probably aware that the program is far from infallible. For example, certain errors – such as unnecessary initial capital letters or accidental use of homonyms – may not be flagged, while words that are actually spelled accurately can be.

Changes both in language and in technology are inevitable and move at a great pace, but they’re not always in step with each other. While newer words like ‘podcast’ and ‘texting’ have found their way into dictionaries, older versions of Word still mark them as wrong. The limitations of spellcheckers have been such that the phenomenon of them wreaking havoc with documents now has its own name: the Cupertino effect.

It’s so-called because ‘Cupertino’ (the Californian city home to Apple Inc.) used to be the first offering to replace ‘cooperation’, back when spellcheckers only recognised the hyphenated version of the word. This meant that anyone breezily pressing ‘accept all changes’ was left with such nonsensical phrases as ‘the Cupertino with our Italian comrades proved to be very fruitful’. (This is taken from an official NATO document from 2003.)

Proper nouns and foreign words can also cause problems, as news service Reuters discovered when it inadvertently ended up referring to Pakistan’s Muttahida Quami Movement as the Muttonhead Quail Movement.

Naturally, updates are being made all the time to prevent these particular blunders – Microsoft Office 2010 offers a contextual speller in order to make correction suggestions more accurate. Nevertheless, other problems are quite likely to pop up and, however ingenious the algorithm behind the latest features, the ultimate responsibility is with us to check what we actually end up saying.

It is also unavoidable that around periods of great change there’ll be those who fret over the potential consequences. The massive rise in texting has led to concern that this abbreviation-filled medium is going to destroy children’s literacy and have them including such terms as ‘LOL’ (laugh out loud) and ‘gr8’ (great) in their schoolwork.

Tales of such inclusions abound, but many are mere fabrication; in fact, several studies have found that the majority of children scornfully denounce the idea that they’d do such a thing. Indeed, a positive aspect could be that kids are taught the importance of writing appropriately for different contexts.

We won’t be able to stop the dual juggernauts of technology and language change, but we needn’t necessarily fear them. The best approach is probably to stop worrying about a future filled with texted essays and automatons in charge of education, and make sure to keep a responsible eye on what we are each actually producing. After all, the future of writing – if not the future of technology – is largely in our hands.