Has anyone read Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"?

[XMan]

In it, Heinlein posits that as we proceed into the future, everyday language will become shortened into short burts . . . I forget what he called, tek speak, or loonie, or something like that.

Anyway, there's an article at the New York Times website about how chat room slang is popping up in the classroom.

I thought it was pretty cool to see yet another sci-fi author's prediction come about.

 

[ElFenix]

tekwar? no wait... that was shatner...

i sorta wanted too... what else did he write? starship troopers? heh.

 

[Howard]

No, but anything with a Long in it, including Maureen + relatives, is good in my book.

 

[loup garou]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
tekwar? no wait... that was shatner...

i sorta wanted too... what else did he write? starship troopers? heh.

Starship Troopers was an awesome book.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Moon was a great book, TANSTAAFL (except in Hot Deals).

Almost all of his old pre-Stranger in a Strange Land stuff is excellent, not just Starship Troopers. I'm less partial to the post-Stranger hippie free love stuff but some of it is quite good too.

The fact that language terms contract over time is from "real" sceince (linguistics) not SF, but many SF authors have used it, as well as the idea of language splitting into "cants" like medspeak, progspeak, etc. for different disciplines as those disciplines become more advanced and specialized.