Baron & Cullington

Baron- pg. 719
            Baron starts out with questioning, how instant messaging and text messaging may be degrading or diminishing our literacy and language. She questions if CMC is actually expanding our language and knowledge, or is it only hurting it. She goes on to explain that, while text messaging and Instant messaging is the new phenomenon in the United States, instant messaging and text messaging have already been a big deal in places like, Europe and Seoul. Then she goes through the history of how language was once always a spoken past time, and never published or sent to a friend in the matter of minutes via an aluminum box. She also goes on to talk about how at the beginning of the text messaging era, kids(most teenagers) were big into abbreviated text. Typical. Even now a days, we are still using some abbreviation like "lol" and "brb", but it is no where to the extent that it used to be. She finishes by saying that, while this modern tool for language can be a good thing, we need to not lose sight of our common knowledge education. Use this modern technology to expand our education and not weaken it.
Cullington- pg. 774
             Cullington starts off by talking about, none other, than the world of text messaging. whoo.hoo. He then starts talking about an article addressing  teens and their texting. The article seems to believe that texting is and, if not now, will downgrade a teens ability to become a proficient writer.And it is holding back our ability to be productive social beings. The article is now blaming texting for making people lazy. Is it not more convenient than lazy? The article is also talking about how abbreviated texting has become second nature to teens amongst their everyday spoken language. That sometimes we do not even catch that we are even doing it. Apparently, we are also avoiding proper punctuation and therefore we are not creating a muscle memory for it, and in the future, it will be harder for us to learn. He finishes the article by saying that texting could be a positive or negative tool for teens and their modern language. They will keep experimenting whether or not if it actually has an influence, but seems they will keep coming up with the same answer. We will never really know the truth.