Thanks to Marie for a comment that inspired another post instead of a comment response!  Marie writes (for those of you too lazy to go back and read the comment yourself!):

Pretty convinced here that good writing comes from lots of good reading.

I think the text language can be compared to Pidgin English -- a utilitarian form of English developed in nations that had to trade with English-speakers and that over decades grew to be very beautiful and expressive. Short cuts and alterations for the sake of practicality can be good things for a dialect, and showcase communal creativity.
Our problem is not that we have a pidgin for our cell phones. Our problem is that we are writing on cell phones more than we are anywhere else. The handy dialect becomes the main language used -- then your national communication becomes stunted and ugly.

Excellent point.  Writing and reading undoubtedly share a correlation in that the more one is exposed to good writing, the more one's own writing should improve.  Not that reading Shakespeare is going to enable you to write like Shakespeare.  But if you read good stuff, it means (theoretically!) that you can understand good writing, and this is likely to seep into your own practices.  The same holds true for a breadth of reading experience.  I like to ask my students what they've read recently, and it's sometimes rather frightening.  Sometimes the answers are I don't like to read.  Or I only read magazines.  Or I only read trade publications.  Or I only read blogs (of course, if they're reading my blog, they get extra credit!).  In general, students that can respond with the last book they read, or indicate that they enjoy reading, perform better and more consistently in terms of writing assignments in class. 

Great analogy about Pidgin English - with the only issue that stands out to me is that Pidgin English is an effort to cross linguistic barriers.  The purpose is not a reductionism in language as a whole, but the ability to communicate effectively between languages.   However, texting language is used as a shortcut for people who already speak the same language.  The only benefit is reduced keystrokes and reduced time in communicating.  To me, this seems more problematic. 

Yes, there are creative aspects to be admired (and I use that word veeerrrrry loosely!).  However, how often do we label short-cuts in other arenas as creative as opposed to lazy?   How often are the shortcuts predominately the work of extremely young people who probably have not fully mastered the nuances of the language they're tweaking?  I know artists who argue that someone who attempts to do art without an understanding of artistic basics like technique and color and Lord only knows what else, is not properly an artist.  It seems that often a demonstrated mastery or at least understanding of a field is a prerequisite to being taken seriously when challenging and changing that field. 

When a handy dialect begins to displace the actual language, a great many people from cultural anthropologists to actual speakers of the language are likely going to begin crying foul pretty quickly.  Your implied solutions are good ones.  A combination of more frequent and robust reading, and intelligent writing (related to the reading or otherwise) should help to solidify both an understanding of a language as well as the ability to utilize that language well. 

I'm not opposed to the idea of dramatic changes in language.  Anyone who enjoys reading Shakespeare, or Chaucer, or even Melville or Poe will quickly recognize that the English language has changed quite a bit over time - so much so that Chaucer can seem indecipherable to the uninitiated, with Shakespeare being scarcely much better.  I guess the question is whether the changes to language because of texting are permanent, and whether they are analogous to the changes we witness between different eras of English language usage.

So, are they?