The Impact of Technology and Social Media on Language: Good or Bad?

Its easy to see how changes in technology over the last century have made an impact on our language. Google is the new verb of choice for searching the Internet, while program has shifted from a noun referring to a planned series of future events to a verb meaning to provide a computer or machine with instructions to perform a task. Apple and Blackberry no longer exclusively refer to fruit. And when we speak about a virus, our first thought isnt with the doctor but with our malware protection software. Because language use and culture are so intimately related, any significant change in the social life of a group of people will result in concurrent changes in the language. Since people first began using technology to communicate, we have had to invent new nouns, verbs, and adjectives to be able to communicate what it is we were doing, and new ways of using these words. The recent advent of what we now call social media sites have spawned similar changes: both to words we already know, like tweeting and, and in the innovation of new words, like podcasting. All of these lexical changes have flowed naturally and necessarily from the need to talk easily about the objects and activities which surround us. Yet the language of (or, perhaps better said, language on) the Internet, has been a constant source of criticism from language scholars since the beginning. Many have argued that the speed and simplicity of communication through new technology has produced a socalled decline of the English language, including shortening of words (like txt for text, u for you) and creative spellings (2nite for tonight) and its worth noting that phenomena like this occur in other languages on the internet. Have technology and social media ruined English (or other languages)? Are these changes putting down a language that was once rich and complex?

Questions: 1. What problem are we trying to solve? 2. What alternative solutions can you suggest for this problem? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each solution? 3. Which solution appears to be the best? 4. How may the preferred solution be implemented?