This Washington Post article brings up the issue of how we interpret text through new mediums. Though the subject is only tangentially breached by the article itself, the reporter quotes an Andrew Weigle as saying "I can put [a message] out there and feel like I'm not saying it." Mr. Weigle sees his text messages as something less than (or less formal than) speech, as contrasting the normal mode of communication for the device he uses, a cellphone.

This perspective is interesting when compared to writing in weblogs. Many bloggers seem to connect weblog-writing to speech, using especially the term "rant" to describe their content (examples: 1 2 3 4 5). The writing seems to gain its speech-like elements from a stream-of-consciousness aesthetic developing from the medium's fascination with the speed of transmission. The attempt to rebaptize weblog writing as speech is an attempt to move it away from the responsibility of writing: the blogger does not want to be held accountable for his/her product or does not feel qualified to be creating this product. To call something a "rant" implies passion but not necessarily truth or credibility. Like with Mr. Weigle, many bloggers are contrasting the normal mode of the device (computer::writing) with an abnormal mode (speech).

What does it mean then when the text-product of text messaging is seen as something lower than speech, less credible than the rant? Especially when this lower utterance takes the physical form of a higher mode: text.