Doublespeak - Is our smartphones makeing us dumberer?

In George Orwell's seminal dystopian novel "1984", the people of the bright and cold future use a speech vastly different from ours for the quickened statement of facts. This "Doublespeak" is remarkably similar to what we would call the "text speak" of today, in that it mutates and changes linguistic structures and forms for the communication of information in a much more quick manner. Of course, dystopian insinuations aside, much can be said when critics are up in arms about the easy targets of "leetspeak" and "text speak".

At it's core, "text speak" seeks to shorten and make haste over large and long to type words and phrases. "You" becomes "u", "wait" becomes "w8", and the well known "lol" (laugh out loud) becomes a universal marker for something we find humorous. The idea that this information and way of speaking is making us less intelligent though is like saying that dialects of Southern English make us stupid- on the contrary it is simply a different way of speaking. Smartphones, in their myriad uses and encouragement of multitasking, may be decreasing our prowess in different areas- yet their unique mode of speech use is not in and of itself an indicator of a loss of intelligence.

Multitasking itself bears some thought though. The various studies and other discussions in this week's readings make it clear that multitasking is bad for base human cognitive function in regards to the mental dexterity that is needed when dealing with multiple subjects at once. As the load increases, human ability to micromanage each part of the whole decreases, showing a classic inverse relationship between load and ability. Smartphones and other such devices encourage such micromanaging of multiple stimuli and loads, and thus I could support the claim that the use of such devices constitutes a overall systematic dampening of the human ability to balance and handle multiple activities and stimuli. In short- smartphones are making us less proficient at tasks, but they aren't making us less intelligent while performing such tasks.