One effect of too-small and hard-to-use keyboards is the shortening of words and messages. This spins itself off into a linguistic subculture where understanding and using code words are evidence of being well-informed and up-to-date — technological sophisticates with backstage passes. Early examples like LOL and ROFL are passè, but do you know about LQL, FOCL, CSL, BAGL, LMAO, CBLTH, and HAFL? Feeling like an outsider? That’s the point. Want to be an insider? Download dozens of apps that allow you to decode acronyms and more that provide dictionaries of InterWeb slang. And for those who tire of having to think up actual words, emojis and emoticons become the lingua franca of the hyper-connecteds.

Writers call using symbols instead of words Forrest Gumping.

For those who write many lengthy documents, a full-size keyboard is the only sensible choice in terms of productivity and ease of use. Yes, I can write on my smartphone, but I don’t want to. I can also cook dinner over a lightbulb, but I don’t want to do that, either. And although it is possible to create and work with spreadsheets and slide shows on our smartphones, computers with full size numerical keypads are far better tools.

So if you do little work and a lot of searching, watching, scanning, and checking up, and you want to do it all day long, everywhere you go, smartphones are ideal. But if you want to work productively, at length, and with fewer distractions, your own desk in a quiet office at work or at home is the place to be.