I got a new iphone and for every word I type, it suggests three words that I can choose next. Eventually, QuickType will learn my texting patterns, and, for every situation, it will suggest words that I have used in similar contexts.

So if I’m not careful, I will become a caricature of myself.

For now, I think, I’m a blank slate.

And yet, even before I had finished typing a single word into my new phone, QuickType was already trying to put words in my virtual mouth.

Where does QuickType get its initial corpus? From people’s texts, I assumed. But Apple’s privacy policy states that my corpus will remain private. So maybe it is a more generic source. Was it the Cambridge English Corpus? No, too formal. The Enron Email Corpus?

Maybe it’s based on everything that Apple already knows about me from whatever corpus they already have of my text.

I want to write more this year. I enjoy writing. I thought I might be an English major in college. The compositional process helps me get to the bottom of my thoughts, and express my ideas to the world.

What happens when we hand over part of this process to predictive text analysis—a machine’s interpretation of our voice?

I’m about to find out. But for now, I like to imagine that QuickType’s initial corpus based on some authoritative analysis of SMS etiquette. Imagine what a great resource that would be: take a snapshot of contemporary text-based communication, and return the lowest common denominator.

Here are some examples from my initial exploration of an untrained QuickType:

I’m so excited for this year and I don’t know how much I love it when people don’t like the new version of this year and the rest of the day before the end of the year before the update is a very nice but it would mean the world is not the same thing over and over again

Sorry, no matter what you think you should have been the same thing as the most recent update it crashes and freezes and crashes and freezes up on me and I don’t think that it was the first time since the update it crashes every time we talk about it and it will not let me know what to say it is not the same thing as the first time since it is not the same thing as the first time since the update

Ok so I can see it as a result of the best thing ever is when I get to see the same thing as the most recent update has been the most beautiful girl in the morning and I’m not going to the gym and then you can get it together and make me laugh so hard for you guys should have been the same thing as the most beautiful girl in the world is full of it

I’m not sure what the heck is going on with my friends and I don’t know what to say I don’t think I might be the same thing as the first time I see you