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epochellipse 's review for:
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
by Gretchen McCulloch
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
This is one of my absolute books I have read in a long time. I cannot recommend it enough.
The style it's written in is phenomenal, and literally 1/4 of the book is references. It took me so long to read (about half a year haha...) since I kept jumping down the rabbit hole of different linguistic references.
The content is so compact and so well-delivered, and forges insightful connections between different fields and explaining different phenomena (like emojis as emblematic gestures), especially as they emerged through history and were shaped by technological changes. I came to this book because I was curious why there was such a generational gap in use of ellipses and. I got answers for that, and 1000 questions I didn't realize I had.
Specific content I enjoyed below the cut:
The concept of "socially illegible" keysmashing, and how that affects the behavior of people with nonstandard keyboards (such as the Dvorak keyboard).
"Writing systems, therefore, are greatly affected by the tools available to make them: it’s easier to carve wood or stone in a straight line, but easier to swirl and loop with ink." And something I've noticed with writing cursive vs print with a fountain pen vs a pencil), and having created some shorthand writing systems that helped me reduce chronic ulnar nerve pain in college.
Research ethics!: "The presence of researchers on social sites is a still-evolving ethical domain. Regardless of who technically has access to their information, people tend to have a mental model of who they expect to read their posts, and feel that their trust is violated when someone outside that model does so."
Racism in gifset use and the concept of digital blackface: "Lauren Michele Jackson pointed out that black people are overrepresented in gifs used by nonblack people, especially those that show extreme emotion. She linked this stereotype to the exaggerated acting of minstrel shows and scholar Sianne Ngai’s term “animatedness” to describe the long-standing tendency to see black people’s actions as hyperbolic."
The use of gesture as embodied cognition that helps us in everything from storytelling to math, to everyday communication over the phone: "we gesture along with our speech even when it’s communicatively useless, such as when we’re talking on the phone. Even people who have been blind since birth do it, even when they’re talking with people who they know are also blind."
And I cannot stress enough how short, quippy, thoroughly researched, and accurate all of these points are.
Not to mention so much information not just on the generational differences, but WHY:
"younger people find that responding to a text message in the company of others is reasonable, because you can integrate it into the pauses of the conversation, but that unplanned phone calls are a gross interruption because they demand your attention instantly, completely, and unpredictably."
"Older people are perfectly happy to interrupt or be interrupted by a voice call, because they’re unexpected and therefor urgent, but find the sight of someone texting an imposition, precisely because you could have put it off until after the conversation entirely."
"Susan Kare, who designed most of the original Apple computer icons, cited her experience with needlepoint and mosaics as preparation for creating icons from small arrays of pixels"
The concept of third places was so perfectly explained, and was one of the bases for my previous mentor's research on telepresence and where most workplace communication takes place (turns out, in hallways!)
This book just, makes me excited about research, and history of technology, and language. Really cannot recommend it enough.
The style it's written in is phenomenal, and literally 1/4 of the book is references. It took me so long to read (about half a year haha...) since I kept jumping down the rabbit hole of different linguistic references.
The content is so compact and so well-delivered, and forges insightful connections between different fields and explaining different phenomena (like emojis as emblematic gestures), especially as they emerged through history and were shaped by technological changes. I came to this book because I was curious why there was such a generational gap in use of ellipses and. I got answers for that, and 1000 questions I didn't realize I had.
Specific content I enjoyed below the cut:
Spoiler
The concept of "socially illegible" keysmashing, and how that affects the behavior of people with nonstandard keyboards (such as the Dvorak keyboard).
"Writing systems, therefore, are greatly affected by the tools available to make them: it’s easier to carve wood or stone in a straight line, but easier to swirl and loop with ink." And something I've noticed with writing cursive vs print with a fountain pen vs a pencil), and having created some shorthand writing systems that helped me reduce chronic ulnar nerve pain in college.
Research ethics!: "The presence of researchers on social sites is a still-evolving ethical domain. Regardless of who technically has access to their information, people tend to have a mental model of who they expect to read their posts, and feel that their trust is violated when someone outside that model does so."
Racism in gifset use and the concept of digital blackface: "Lauren Michele Jackson pointed out that black people are overrepresented in gifs used by nonblack people, especially those that show extreme emotion. She linked this stereotype to the exaggerated acting of minstrel shows and scholar Sianne Ngai’s term “animatedness” to describe the long-standing tendency to see black people’s actions as hyperbolic."
The use of gesture as embodied cognition that helps us in everything from storytelling to math, to everyday communication over the phone: "we gesture along with our speech even when it’s communicatively useless, such as when we’re talking on the phone. Even people who have been blind since birth do it, even when they’re talking with people who they know are also blind."
And I cannot stress enough how short, quippy, thoroughly researched, and accurate all of these points are.
Not to mention so much information not just on the generational differences, but WHY:
"younger people find that responding to a text message in the company of others is reasonable, because you can integrate it into the pauses of the conversation, but that unplanned phone calls are a gross interruption because they demand your attention instantly, completely, and unpredictably."
"Older people are perfectly happy to interrupt or be interrupted by a voice call, because they’re unexpected and therefor urgent, but find the sight of someone texting an imposition, precisely because you could have put it off until after the conversation entirely."
"Susan Kare, who designed most of the original Apple computer icons, cited her experience with needlepoint and mosaics as preparation for creating icons from small arrays of pixels"
The concept of third places was so perfectly explained, and was one of the bases for my previous mentor's research on telepresence and where most workplace communication takes place (turns out, in hallways!)
This book just, makes me excited about research, and history of technology, and language. Really cannot recommend it enough.