Session 8 - Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) (16 October 2009)

The first thing that came to mind when I saw the acronym CMC was vintage cars. I collect 1/24 and 1/18 scale model cars, and CMC is a German company that makes some of the finest (and most expensive) models of vintage automobiles: http://www.cmc-modelcars.de/en/index.htm I must have spent a small fortune on them, but better that than clubbing or clothes or hair or expensive electronic gadgets that did not have contact with a single human hand during production and become obsolete within two minutes of purchase.

Speaking of electronic gadgets, it seems that a lot of them dominate our lives and reduce them to impersonal simulations of reality (a bit like how model cars represent the real thing until you actually want to drive somewhere), or are the best thing since... the last best thing, depending on which camp you’re in. Personally I fall somewhere in between at the moment; I used to be very old-fashioned, hating change of any kind and wishing, in frequent bouts of Keatsian angst, for the perpetuity of all things bright and beautiful. Now, however, although still old-fashioned in some ways (I refuse to wear a non-mechanical watch, for instance), I’ve come to accept and even embrace advanced technology. In fact people like me, who find social communication and interaction as difficult and non-intuitive as walking sideways with your eyes shut while simultaneously balancing a beach ball on your head and reciting Paradise Lost from memory, have never had it better, what with SMS and e-mail and ‘msn’ and the like replacing face-to-face contact in so many instances. Not only that, such technology also enables me to compose what I want to say in full before communicating it, unlike the old-fashioned telephone (a phone that actually enables you to talk to someone only! Who’d have thought of that?).

I’ve realised that what I really can’t stand is not CMC itself, but rather the users of CMC who allow its convenience to degrade their language skills to the point that it actually becomes physically painful to read the results of their ‘communication’, if it could be called thus. Unfortunately we had the displeasure of doing just that in class, in the name of academic research; my own research after reading that mess involved finding a speedy migraine cure. No one expects Queen’s English or every single word to be spelled out in full, but the depths to which some ‘CMCers’ sink defies belief. The standard of English here isn’t great to being with, and this only makes it worse. Anyway, I’d lik 2 sine off wif a gd eg of wat I’m toking abt. Hop u cn udrstnd mi. Thn agn, if u cnt it prvs my pt only 2 wll.