Caroline Tagg

Can I have a PhD now?

For the species involved with the life purpose of “Boredom and Nothing To Do”, it seems that we have hit a new low.  It used to be that PhD’s were given out to people that could save your life, then they were given out to people who convinced you they could save your life with their words, followed by giving it out to people who studied any respectable subject for far too long.  But now, we just give them out to anyone who does anything for far too long.

For many people, texting serves as a useful tool. But for British student Caroline Tagg, a study of text-messaging earned her a PhD in Philosophy.

You read that correctly.  It’s gotta be the equivalent to the PhD Mase gave out in the song “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down”.

To earn the degree, Tagg spent nearly four years studying a total of 11,000 text messages containing 190,000 words and sent by 235 people, all of which she compiled and analyzed in a database.

Studying, compling, anazlying for 4 years?  Right.  I could do this in 10 minutes with textsfromlastnight.com in one hand, and copy/paste in the other.  I’m going to

[Tagg] discovered that people text in the same way as if they were talking, using unnecessary words such as ‘oh’, ‘erm’ and often use grammatical abbreviations like ‘dunno’….“Actually, not many people use abbreviations,” she said. “People use playful manipulation and metaphors. It is a playful language. Not only are they quite creative, it is also quite expressive.”

Great.   How does this help us again?  How is this advancing our collective knowledge and moving us forward?  There must be some piece of ground breaking information that Tagg discovered that is going to change the way we view text messaging forever…

She found that the average text message contains 17.5 words and that (shocker) some texts can be about incredibly mundane matters.

A PhD, folks.  Somewhere some guy is getting pelted with gamma rays while he studies the effects of solar flares on satellites and our communication infrastructure, and Caroline Tagg was reading text messages and giving us word counts. 

Is anyone else ready for Operation Thin Out The Herd yet?  While you think about it, I’m going to start my thesis: “Sonicare: What order do people brush the 4 regions of their teeth, and what that tells us about human urban migration”.  Toodles.

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