03/06/2011 - by Chuck Monan, Preaching Minister

 My spelling is Wobbly.  It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places.

~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

A lot of folks would nod in agreement at Milne’s words.  Lousy spelling is commonplace these days.  But never fear: armed with computers featuring spell check and smart phones with autocorrection, spelling errors would instantly become a relic of the past.

Except that it didn’t work out that way, as The New York Times Magazine writer Ben Zimmer explains:

Pity poor Hannah, who received a startling text message on her cellphone, sent from her father: “Your mom and I are going to divorce next month.” 

After Hannah registered her alarm, her father quickly texted back: “I wrote, ‘Disney,’ and this phone changed it.  We are going to Disney.”

Welcome to the world of smartphone autocorrection, where incautious typing can lead to hilarious and sometimes shocking results.  With the rapid success of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones, more and more people are discovering the pitfalls of tapping on a virtual keyboard.  Just as the spell-check feature in a word-processing program tries to save you from your own sloppy typing, either by politely suggesting alternatives or by automatically replacing egregious errors, the latest mobile devices are supposed to take care of your typos -- but often fail with cosmic results.

Such computer-aided miscorrections are referred to as “the Cupertino effect.”  Back in 1997, when Microsoft Word introduced its background spell-checker, the word cooperation was rendered Cupertino.  When translators for the European Union started noticing the name of this Northern California town, coincidentally the home of Apple, Inc., creeping into their documents, they coined “the Cupertino effect.”

One aspect of this technology has a rather significant lesson to teach us. Android phones, iPhones and other smartphones learn from the patterns of individual users, creating a unique textual footprint. As we text, our phones are writing a biography of sorts about us: what we say, what we think, what we spend time on, how we communicate it.

If this sounds a little disconcerting, it shouldn’t.  Other forms of intelligence have been learning from our speech patterns for years.  They are our spouses, children, friends, neighbors, co-workers and brothers and sisters at church.  Whether we recognize it or not, how we communicate leaves behind a unique footprint discerned by others.  The Bible recognized this a long time ago:

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

~ Matt. 12:35-37

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.

~ 1 Tim. 4:12

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

~ Col. 4:6

All of us can put such words into our communication, whether we can spell them or not.