So, for this week I'll be writing my observations about the book 1984.  First off,  I love this book.  George Orwell paints a spectacularly dreary landscape of mankind's future.  For those of you who don't know the book, it is about a future constantly at war.  The masses of society are under the all powerful "Big Brother".   Thought itself is regulated by the government in this society, and disagreeing with the government (even in thought) is punishable by death.  The story follows the personal journey of a man named Winston (I really can't say more without delving into the important details of the story).  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.
While I personally believe there are multiple parallels that could be drawn from this world in 1984 and modern times (which is kind of scary if you know what the world is in 1984), I want to focus on newspeak.  Newspeak is the official language in this world and it is a very abbreviated, minimalist approach to language.  Most full sentence type ideas are gone, and replaced by very short, concise, expressionless words.  It is a very pragmatic way to communicate, but it results in a very stupefied society.   As I was reading this it occurred to me how similar this form of communication is to our own "text talk".  I don't believe that there is anything wrong with the way that we abbreviate words or phrases to make an idea shorter and simpler.  I do think the comparison (those who have read the book might agree with me) between these two modes of communication is astounding.  To me, speaking letter abbreviations instead of full words is frustrating.  By no means am I saying that speaking like this is stupid, but it does show a lack of something to me.  Words can express so much and many people just don't seem to realize that.  I don't believe that our society is going to turn into the dystopia of 1984 but I find in fascinating that George Orwell thought that the deterioration of language would be one of the first real things to subjugate the mind of man to the will of some government.  Does this mean I think that language is falling apart in society?  Not explicitly, but I can see that as being a distinct possibility in the future.  Society as a whole (at least in America, I don't know much about others honestly) does not seem to be getting any smarter.  I must apologize for the inconsistency of all this.  The main point of this was just to share an interesting parallel for you all.  So yeah..... 1984, Great book.  Check it out everybody.