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6,473 Texts a Month, But at What Cost?

….”But some experts say there are downsides, starting with declines in spelling, word choice and writing complexity. Some suggest too much texting is related to an inability to focus.”

….”‘The mode of communication among young people is changing so rapidly that I can’t help but surmise that it will change the way they think,’ said John Palfrey, a Harvard University law professor and co-author of ‘Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.’ The big question is how.”

Via PoetryHut: Barack Obama has tapped poet Elizabeth Alexander, 46, a prize-winning poet and professor of African American studies at Yale University, to do the inaugural reading on January 20th, reports the Washington Post.

Other celebs at the event: Yo Yo Ma, Rick Warren (yes, the purpose driven life guy), Aretha Franklin (the Queen of Soul), and others, per the New York Times.

The New York Times reports that Google has launched a voice recognition application for the iPhone that allows users to call Google and conduct a search verbally.  Users “can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like ‘Where’s the nearest Starbucks?’ or ‘How tall is Mount Everest?’ The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.”

So, poegling can now arguably join the oral poetry tradition that produced works of anonymous authorship like Beowulf, the Homeric epics, and much of the world’s folk literature.  The poetics of orality- brought to you by Google.

Related: see Mary Karr’s Poet’s Choice column in the Washington Post today.  “Poetry’s roots in sacred song are undeniable. Native American hunters around a fire praised the Great Spirit for sending buffalo. In other cultures, tillers of the soil begged a cloudless sky to split open and loose down rain. I would rank Robert Bly’s translations of Kabir — a 15th-century Indian ecstatic poet raised Muslim and infused with wisdom from both the Sufis and Hindus — up there with the Hebrew Psalms and the Song of Solomon.”