"Verbage" in the Late Age of Print

Have you ever heard:

"She texted me."
"He myspaced me."
"Will you email me?"
"I twittered this morning."
"Did he really facebook her?"
"Tag me in that pic on myspace!"
"You-tube that video of your parakeet." ?

Well then, you live in the late age of print where verbs have changed, and language is evolving every second that ticks by on your Sharper Image multi-functina clock. I recently started thinking about all the new words that have been added to common discourse because of technology. Everyday I think of a new one, and there's no end in sight. With each new technology that hits the mainstream consumer circuit, a new word has to be added to encompass the device’s capabilities and functions.

In my American Renaissance Literature course, we are discussing Henry David Thoreau, and his ideology promotes the polar opposite of the technologically clad world in which we live. As one critic, whom I’ve accidentally misplaced the name of, states “his celebration of nature and his call to simplify have stirred countless readers who yearn to escape the artificialities of a society that is glutted with gadgetry and ruins nature in the name of progress.” Hmm!!!

Does this apt description not hit the head of our little nail (world in which we live) dead on the head? I think so! Can you imagine the old bards of yesteryear in this modern world with our myspace and our twitter? What would they do? What would they say? I can’t even imagine. I do know that although sometimes I think I’d like to run away to someplace like Walden and live with no luxuries, I must accept the fact that I live in this world inundated with technology. So, it’s either learn how to adapt, or be lost amidst a cybernetic/informatics/posthuman/vitual bodied conversation!

P.S. most of the "new verbs" I used in the opening lines of this post were not recognized by Microsoft Word as words. Get with it Bill!