So I recently succumbed to the crushing, merciless pop culture peer pressure that is Twitter. Like MySpace and Facebook before it, Twitter is addictive and pervasive. Even Drexel Publishing Group has a Twitter. (In fact, what’s funny is that this very blog post will be one of the upcoming “tweets.” Well, I think it’s funny. Leave me alone.)

In case you aren’t quite as hip and with it as everyone else in the WORLD, Twitter is essentially the ultimate ego trip. The purpose is to post quick blurbs, always in 140 characters or fewer, known as “tweets,” which update your “followers” constantly as to your every minute shift in mood and activity. “Leaving for work in 25 minutes. Bored.” “Leaving for work in 20 minutes. Money!!” “Leaving for work in 12 minutes. Stomach hurts. Ugh.”

But what interests me most is the 140 characters or less stipulation. I’m not one of those anti-texting extremists who push the idea that modern communications are going to destroy the English language as we know it, but I have to wonder if there will be changes to the mass thinking process, and in turn the writing process, as every kid with a computer learns to think in hyperspeed blips. Will this improve economy of language? Destroy the ability to form a complete, coherent thought?

Neither? Nothing remotely so dramatic at all?

Only time will tell, but in the meantime, I wonder.

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