Google messed with Gmail’s design again, and I like it, except they took away some of the word commands and replaced them with icons.Which is a fine concept, and I’m not a tiny icon hater per se, except that I’ve been noticing a trend and Holy Wernicke, I’m getting worried about what’s been happening to my brain.
Words are being disappeared. It’s like Nike swooshed them away with their swoosh. My bank’s ATM machine now has a tiny house instead of the word “Home” and -$ and +$$$$ instead of “Withdrawal” and “Deposit.” I know this has been happening for a long time now, and there are so many positives, including creating a common communication mode for different language speakers. But something feels different to me now. A critical mass is being reached, if not in my environment, at least in my head.
It’s like when you study a foreign language long enough, and eventually you find you are not decoding and recoding the language, you aren’t translating, you are grokking it whole cloth? I’m hieroglyphing, baby, but the scary part is while I’m becoming one with the icons, words are leaving my brain. I’m going to need a McDonald’s pictoregister to run my life. I’m going to need glass shelves full of resin replicas of Kung Pao Chicken so I can point at my food.
A friend changed her photo on Facebook, and I was all some internal version of who red sweater blonde?, while face -to-face with her strangerness even though her printed name was right there. Later in the day, I couldn’t for the life of me remember if she was a “y” or an “ie.” It is possible that my worldlessness is a sign of menopause, but I can’t process that word, not yet, and I have no other symptoms, so I’m sticking with blaming Nike and Gmail and the Internet and stuff.