Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch

For the first bookclub of the new decade, we read Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch.  In the book, the author provides a linguistic analysis of the language appearing on the Internet.  She covers topics such as how new words catch on, typographical tone of voice, emojis, chat rooms, and memes, to name a few.

We agreed that it certainly wasn't a page-turner, but given our collective interest in speech recognition and language, we felt that the topics were interesting.  Chapter 4 even begins with "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that," a phrase we've probably all worked into a dialog design at some point.

Some were nostalgic about back-in-the-day bulletin boards and chat rooms, with at least one identifying as an Old Internet Person. Others who came on-line a bit later classified themselves as Semi Internet People.  And because we're not spring chickens anymore, most still hold onto old conventions such as using punctuation and typing two spaces after periods.

We discussed catch-phrases we encounter in the business world such as organic, cadence, and flip your bit, and how absolutely is trendy right now.  In kid slang, we notice our kids saying things like same and cringy. We also shared some words from each of our Familects, dialects that are unique to our families.  hair doodles, HTF, Sonoma with the wrong stress, the black store (WholeFoods), bottle of 609, potato medley, and beebows.

And, of course, we strayed from the book and explored other topics such as heath, diversity in the workplace, women role-models in engineering, anniversaries, stalkers, haircuts, volunteering, family, and parenting, to name a few.

Here's to a new decade of bookclub!