What do u think technology mite b doing 2 our language? lol

My main impression of Baron's argument is that she does not think that technology such as email, IM, and text messaging has a significantly negative impact on more formal writing skills. If anything is causing a decline in the quality of Americans' writing, it is "the sheer amount of text that literate Americans produce" these days (p 7). For now, I tend to agree with Baron that while technology may lead to some changes in the English language, it probably will not have a major negative impact on writing and language skills. For example, abbreviations such as b4 and U will probably remain unacceptable in formal writing. Even though friends might say things such as "brb" out loud to each other, people probably will always understand that it is not appropriate to say them in a business meeting.

If anything, I think that being able to differentiate between very informal language (texting, IM) and more "normal" language could help people to strengthen their language skills in general. Being able to adapt to different social situations is an important skill, and language plays a large role in this. Developing flexibility of language use and learning what is appropriate for different situations may help us to expand our repertoire of language practices. However, this could heavily depend on the strength of one's language education during elementary-high school, in order to avoid the "whatever" attitude Baron alludes to when someone's grammar mistake is corrected.

While I don't think that texting and IM/email are ruining our language, I do think that such technology will contribute to a shift in overall style. In particular, I think that elements of writing (sentences, paragraphs, overall pieces of writing) will become shorter as we become more accustomed to producing many small messages in a short amount of time. Technology might play a role in this shift to shorter/simpler writing, but I do not think it is the sole factor because American writing in general has undergone similar changes over time up to this point anyway.

The primary negative effect of communication technologies (Baron also discusses this) would probably be its effect on social relationships. IM, texting, and email provide ways to keep in touch with many people, but only on a superficial level with no face-to-face interaction. This does not reflect a change in language itself, but it might become increasingly important to think about as our number of "strong ties" decreases (as Baron mentions).