This is my AIM (aol instant messaging) speech converter program. AIM once was the craze at my elementary school, and I have been using it ever since with my close friends. I wanted to examine the way we speak over the internet -- the way we shorten, fragment, abbreviate, and employ numbers to replace words in our "sentences." One thing that I found interesting in writing this program was that it actually took a lot of thinking to come up with the words to include that we normally simplify. In order to realize what I should include, I actually just started talking to my friends on AIM... sure enough, my internet-speak began flowing out, and I noted the words I was corrupting. I think this was a good discovery (that it was difficult for me to speak "internet vernacular" on command), because it has somewhat alleviated my frequent worry that the way our generation speaks through text and IM will start to corrode our normal speech habits.
When I initially proposed this idea on the blog, Mike cautioned me that something similar already exists (the 1337 translator: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/text/leet). Nonetheless, I still felt confident that there was a difference between what the 1337 translator and my idea. While the 1337 translator cleverly uses symbols and characters rarely (if not ever) seen or used to create a replica of the text you entered, my translator makes more of a statement on the way we use common symbols to truncate our communication and make it more effortless.
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