Innovation? This actually seems like it's building off of something old. Like a telegram: I think people are being overly neurotic! I think we need to talk on the phone more often! I'm cool with the evolution of punctuation! But I don't think we should encourage insecurity!
I agree in that I think part of this can be attributed to overanalyzing text messages on the part of teenagers. Hey, not gonna lie, I did that once. I also remember a time when, if I said "K" to something (as opposed to "OK" or "kk") it meant I was really pissed off. When people used "k" with me I thought they were pissed as well. It was silly.
What the article is dealing with, is attribution. It happens all the time in life, for example: when one is on the highway and then one gets cut off abruptly. Most would immediately respond with anger, or the thought that the driver is crazy or stupid, when in fact any number of things could be happening. The driver's spouse could be critically injured at the hospital, the driver could be in serious need of a bathroom, the accelerator could be broken, etc., etc. Anyway, from what I understand, this is a huge problem with e-mail and causes all kinds of tensions in companies and corporations. As a culture of busy people, I think it's easy to lapse into easy attributions, especially as people (especially younger people) have less and less experience with direct human interaction. I really think that speaking to people instead of texting all the time, even when one does have the luxury to talk, greatly contributes to the miasma of mass attributions, but I have no idea how the shift from texting all the time would come about.