Right, let me take a deep breath and try and get my keyboard around some kind of approach towards the above mentioned topics. I would like to start a discussion on i-Memes of abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms that seem to sweep through this digital realm like wild fire.

Our friend Mike Quinion did an interesting piece on the topic a while back which started with these words:

"Perhaps it is our acquired behavioural bias towards haste that has caused it, but there is certainly something in the modern mind which is attracted to abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms."
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/asye.htm

This is true enough - but now thanks to the excruciatingly pokey 12-button keypads that are offered on feather-light mobile phones, notebooks, PDAs, MP3-Players and the like of today, the trend seems to have only been exacerbated.

Mr. Quinion noted then that the suffix 'e-' had at the time seemed to have taken over the baton from 'cyber' or plain 'cy-' as the buzzfix of choice to describe anything networked, on-line, or simply digital. Now with the popularity of the i-Pod we have i-Robots, an i-D magazine and many marketing neologisms no doubt which will follow this latest mimetic, memetic craze.

Now, I'm searching for some greater linguistic trend here (or at least some perspective!) which I hope all you tech-savy linguists and phoneticians can help me with. So, is there any, or is the answer simly the increasing fragmentation, discontinuity, and sterility of modern day language? Is this trend inherently 'bad' and subversive, or merely a reflection of our digi-life 2.0? All comments welcome!