How does technology influence language and how words are “created” based on new modes of communication?
We have to remember that the most important technology of communication is indeed language, and it is through the manipulation of the symbols that make up the language of a culture that we define the culture. Thus all elements of a cultural system influence the fundamental technology of language. The tools we use to improve our quality of life, from the rake to clear the fall leaves to the Smartphone to unfriend those we do not want on Facebook, all influence how we make sense of the world around us. As such these tools would necessarily influence language. Over the history of human civilization as new tools have been introduced we have had to find ways to name them. The printing “press” borrows the name from the wine “press,” just as the word “eyeglasses” mirrors the material used to make the tool, although very few eyeglasses are now made of glass. We need to label the tools and as such technology influences language and words.
