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Because Internet
- Understanding the New Rules of Language
- Narrated by: Gretchen McCulloch
- Length: 8 hrs
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Publisher's summary
An Instant New York Times Best Seller!
Named a Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Amazon, and The Washington Post
A Wired Must-Read Book of Summer
“Gretchen McCulloch is the internet’s favorite linguist, and this book is essential reading. Reading her work is like suddenly being able to see the matrix.” (Jonny Sun, author of everyone's a aliebn when ur a aliebn too)
Because Internet is for anyone who's ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It's the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that's a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.
Language is humanity's most spectacular open-source project, and the internet is making our language change faster and in more interesting ways than ever before. Internet conversations are structured by the shape of our apps and platforms, from the grammar of status updates to the protocols of comments and @replies. Linguistically inventive online communities spread new slang and jargon with dizzying speed. What's more, social media is a vast laboratory of unedited, unfiltered words where we can watch language evolve in real time. Even the most absurd-looking slang has genuine patterns behind it.
Internet linguist Gretchen McCulloch explores the deep forces that shape human language and influence the way we communicate with one another. She explains how your first social internet experience influences whether you prefer "LOL" or "lol," why ~sparkly tildes~ succeeded where centuries of proposals for irony punctuation had failed, what emoji have in common with physical gestures, and how the artfully disarrayed language of animal memes like lolcats and doggo made them more likely to spread.
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“McCulloch is such a disarming writer - lucid, friendly, unequivocally excited about her subject - that I began to marvel at the flexibility of the online language she describes, with its numerous shades of subtlety.” (The New York Times)
“McCulloch’s book is a good start in guiding readers to consider the wild language of the internet as a thing of wonder - a valuable feature, not a bug.” (The Wall Street Journal)
“[An] effervescent study of how the digital world is transfiguring English.... [McCulloch’s] almost political thesis - the more voices, the better - rebukes both the élitism of traditional grammar snobs and the cliquishness of, say, Tumblr. It’s a vision of language as one way to make room for one another.” (The New Yorker)
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Story
We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We'd nail down the facts and move on. But in the Internet age, knowledge has moved onto networks. There's more knowledge than ever, of course, but it's different. Topics have no boundaries, and nobody agrees on anything.Yet this is the greatest time in history to be a knowledge seeker - if you know how.
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Good to know ...
- By John B. Fisher on 01-24-12
By: David Weinberger
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The Prodigal Tongue
- The Love-Hate Relationship Between American and British English
- By: Lynne Murphy
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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"If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd sound like an American." "English accents are the sexiest." "Americans have ruined the English language." "Technology means everyone will have to speak the same English." Such claims about the English language are often repeated but rarely examined. Professor Lynne Murphy is on the linguistic front line. In The Prodigal Tongue she explores the fiction and reality of the special relationship between British and American English.
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TOO MUCH BITTERNESS
- By Tina on 08-27-20
By: Lynne Murphy
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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Break Through the Noise
- The Nine Rules to Capture Global Attention
- By: Tim Staples, Josh Young
- Narrated by: Luis Moreno
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The odds of getting a video onto YouTube's front page are 1-in-2,000,0000, but Tim Staples, founder and CEO of Shareability, knows how to make the algorithms of Youtube, Google, Facebook and Instagram work for you - and he has the results to prove it, with a thriving business that has gotten their videos onto YouTube's front page an amazing 25 times. Here he shows savvy marketers, entrepreneurs, and online celebrity wannabes how they, too, can develop clever videos that amass millions of views.
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NOT A GOOD BOOK TO BE
- By FABIO HART on 05-08-22
By: Tim Staples, and others
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Make Noise
- A Creator's Guide to Podcasting and Great Audio Storytelling
- By: Eric Nuzum
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Make Noise brings all the wisdom, advice, practical information, and big-picture thinking that any individual or business needs to make a successful podcast. He identifies core principles - such as create empathetically, i.e., think like the audience listens, and stay focused on what’s unique to you and what you have to say. He helps listeners come up with a “Ten Word Description” that will guide them throughout the creative process and then gets into how-tos - how to develop character, story, voice, and more.
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Excellent, thought provoking.
- By William Scott on 09-05-20
By: Eric Nuzum
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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
- The Untold History of English
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.
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Great for casual linguists
- By Bertie on 01-11-10
By: John McWhorter
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The Impact Equation
- Are You Making Things Happen or Just Making Noise?
- By: Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
- Narrated by: Chris Brogan, Julien Smith
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Three short years ago, when Chris Brogan and Julien Smith wrote their best seller, Trust Agents, being interesting and human on the Web was enough to build a significant audience. But now, everybody has a platform. The problem is that most of them are just making noise. In The Impact Equation, Brogan and Smith show that to make people truly care about what you have to say - you need more than just a good idea, trust among your audience, or a certain number of followers.
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Almost as good as Contagious
- By Bruce on 05-15-13
By: Chris Brogan, and others
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The Story of English in 100 Words
- By: David Crystal
- Narrated by: David Crystal
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences, and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ("roe", in case you are wondering). Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ("loaf") to cutting edge ("twittersphere") and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ("and", "what") to the more fanciful ("fopdoodle"), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language.
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Random but entertaining
- By Sean on 04-01-13
By: David Crystal
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Babel No More
- The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners
- By: Michael Erard
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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We all learn at least one language as children. But what does it take to learn six languages...or seventy? In Babel No More, Michael Erard, "a monolingual with benefits," sets out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures like Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak seventy-two languages; Emil Krebs, a pugnacious German diplomat, who spoke sixty-eight languages; and Lomb Kat, a Hungarian who taught herself Russian by reading Russian romance novels.
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Heavy on anecdote, light on science
- By S. Yates on 07-15-16
By: Michael Erard
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Digital Minimalism
- Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
- By: Cal Newport
- Narrated by: Will Damron, Cal Newport
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the best-selling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.
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Disappointing
- By Aaron on 04-15-19
By: Cal Newport
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The Shallows
- What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
- By: Nicholas Carr
- Narrated by: Richard Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Weaving insights from philosophy, neuroscience, and history into a rich narrative, The Shallows explains how the internet is rerouting our neural pathways, replacing the subtle mind of the book reader with the distracted mind of the screen watcher. A gripping story of human transformation played out against a backdrop of technological upheaval, The Shallows will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
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It is not consistant, so it is frustrating.
- By Adam Shields on 08-03-12
By: Nicholas Carr
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Outnumbered
- Exploring the Algorithms That Control Our Lives
- By: David Sumpter
- Narrated by: David West
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Our increasing reliance on technology and the Internet has opened a window for mathematicians and data researchers to gaze through into our lives. Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy, what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits, and increasingly we are relinquishing our decision making to algorithms - are we giving up this up too easily?
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A good reality check for "Cambridge Hyperbolitica"
- By Haggai Elkayam on 08-06-18
By: David Sumpter
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Words on the Move
- Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally)
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Words on the Move opens our eyes to the surprising backstories to the words and expressions we use every day. Did you know that silly once meant "blessed"? Or that ought was the original past tense of owe? Or that the suffix -ly in adverbs is actually a remnant of the word like? And have you ever wondered why some people from New Orleans sound as if they come from Brooklyn?
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Review By a Fan
- By Margaret on 09-25-16
By: John McWhorter
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How to Write Short
- Word Craft for Fast Times
- By: Roy Peter Clark
- Narrated by: Roy Peter Clark
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In How to Write Short , Roy Peter Clark turns his attention to the art of painting a thousand pictures with just a few words. Short forms of writing have always existed - from ship logs and telegrams to prayers and haikus. But in this ever-changing Internet age, short-form writing has become an essential skill. Clark covers how to write effective and powerful titles, headlines, essays, sales pitches, Tweets, letters, and even self-descriptions for online dating services.
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Ironically long
- By Amazon Customer on 03-14-16
By: Roy Peter Clark
What listeners say about Because Internet
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Claire
- 01-26-20
Such a fun narrator!
I loved this book! I’ve already recommended it to two friends. Heard McCulloch’s conversation with Ezra Klein on Klein’s podcast.
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- Jon Harmon
- 06-26-22
Too Short!
Really the only ~flaw~ with this is that I wanted more! And that I'm hyper aware of the language I'm using in this review and how I'm typing it!
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- Harper Wakeman
- 10-03-20
Academic and Engaging
Because Internet is a linguistic study of language on the internet that provides a fascinating look into how people use language on the internet and why. In a culture where new language/culture is so often looked down upon, doubly so for the internet, this study isn't just interesting, it's vitally important.
On top of that, McCullough's reading is energetic and full of passion.
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- Bex
- 08-10-24
Linguistic Nerdery Par Excellence!
For those who love thinking about how language works or who have ever wondered what the heck is going on with language usage on the internet, this book is for you!
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- Amazon Customer
- 09-16-19
Funny, interesting, historical, current
Highly recommended for those that work in tech, or use tech. Well researched and thoughtful.
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- Troy Latta
- 05-17-20
funny and insightful
I listen to McCulloch's podcast, so I thought I knew what to expect. I was both correct, in terms of tone and humor, and incorrect in terms of depth and complexity. In this book, she had so much more time to delve into complexities and nuances, and yet she was completely honest in her incompleteness as well.
No single book can cover every interrelated point on a subject, but this one does such a good job of hitting so many high points, that she leaves you with a roadmap of which depths you want to plumb more for yourself.
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- Kindle Customer
- 08-03-19
A delight to listen to
Listen- up front I should say that I've followed the author's blog for about a year now, so I knew roughly what I was getting into- but I was still overwhelmed by the sheer joy sparking through every word. This book is just as much a love letter to language, as it is a dissection on the way that language has changed through it's exposure to the internet. It's hard to imagine this book narrated by anyone other than the author, and there are occasional joking asides about you, the audiobook listener.
I'm biased, because I'm exactly the kind of nerd who would get exited about a book on the way grammar has changed to reflect the more informal settings the internet provides- but even if you aren't already, this book is about guaranteed to make you one through sheer enthusiasm for the subject alone.
(and, yes, this book has made me very self aware of how i type to friends and loved ones, and caused the occasional muffled swear as i realized i was doing something i hadn't realized was something i did)
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- P. Canniff
- 08-01-19
A good overview of the evolving language(s) of internet users
The author is a great reader. She does an awesome job with the typographical stuff - pronouncing “fadesmash” stuff like asdhfhshs, discussing lowercase ce uppercase, etc. without breaking the flow of the audiobook. She’s a little fast - this is one book I won’t be listening to on 1.25x speed.
The content is a welcome survey of the language of the internet. Even back to the old days of my youth. It’s really weird hearing about gaps in the written documentation of stuff a few decades ago! It greatly increases my sympathy for linguists dealing with issues centuries ago. And interesting to hear about a language area where written form is the primary form!
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8 people found this helpful
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- BeijInga
- 09-03-19
Informative and entertaining!
Very informative and entertaining. Highly recommended to anyone who is even slightly interested in the development of internet culture and language.
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- Jen
- 12-01-22
Interesting, informative and entertaining
Surprisingly for an author read book, the performance was great too.
Giving this to my Dad for his 91rst birthday. He’s not online but he loves language and is interested in reading the book too. That way he can understand the « ambient culture » as the author puts it.
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