Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World by Naomi S. Baron

I am presently in the middle of reading the book Always On by Naomi S. Baron. I was so enthused about it that I couldn't wait until I actually finished the book to talk a little about its subject matter.

Basically, this book is what happens when a linguist decides to write about communication technologies. Period. It's that simple. I have found the quality of the writing of exquisite academic authoritativeness. The book begins by describing the "domestication of technology", which I found to be a clever way of articulating a rather subtle series of a multidude of events, from the ARPANET to the present-day status of "Update-o-mania", if I can call it that. (I'm not an academic, I have the freedom of putting my foot in my mouth.)

I found the writing extremely erudite. Ms. Baron describes a profile as a "personal information form", which is precisely what it is, except that I've never seen nor heard anyone put it in exactly that way. It goes with what I said about the use of the terms "the domestication of communication technologies".

The author, Naomi S. Baron, also does something which is spectacular for me: She uses the term "electronic language media", which is what typewriters & landline telephones were before computers and mobile devices arrived which are also more of the same. I think that this has something to do with the author being an authority in the realm of linguistics. It just follows suit that a linguist would take such great care in their writing, in choosing the right words, in curating the work with meticulous concern for correct and efficient / precise articulations.

Other keyphrases I enjoyed: our "communication landscape", the "volume of social interactions" (i.e. as in the "volume knob / control"), and she speaks of a "language application", i.e. email and IM are language applications.

This book, though, really studies very closely the human social use of these various communication technologies or language media. The scientificity of the research is unquestionable and of the highest professionalism and integrity.

Reading this book, though, has sparked much thought in my mind. Since Ms. Naomi S. Baron essentially breaks all telecommunications & computer-mediated communications into various parts, with the cutting-edge logic of a linguist, I began thinking that linguists should be hired to take us out of our quagmire and into the true Semantic Web.

I began thinking about semantics, about meaning. When I use a Google Alert, I am receiving the latest searches that were made using a given "keyword". So in essence if the multitude is searching for information about the iPad and the multitude is also creating content on the subject of the iPad, then the keyword "iPad" will pop up in my alerts, and show great volumes of current usage. This means that a relevant key term right now is the "iPad". But this doesn't tell me anything about iPads other than they are being talked about. In and of itself, this information is useless to me. I know people are talking about iPads, they have been for over a month and they will be for quite some time, just like I expect people to talk and write about the mobile web or interactive agencies.

We have to find a way to search for more than the mere topic being mentioned. We need to know if the text which in a documentary fashion makes use of the term "iPad" is saying something good, bad, or neutral about "iPads". That's one example of taking it to the next level. The actual keyphrases we are looking for are NOT the ones mentioning Apple & Cisco, but the sentences and sentence-fragments AROUND the use of those key terms.

I should be able at this point to do a plain English / natural language textual search for more than just common TAGS. Tags are only denoting subject matter or other topical fields when what I want to know is what people are thinking, not what words they are using. We have to be able to get INSIDE the various articulations that people are making, to get deep into the MECHANICS of verbal behavior or expression. I want to search through an index of COLORS OF SPEECH, I want to be able to search audio using a given particular sound whose usage I want to see represented. I'm talking about AFFINITIES between words, concepts, sentiments, thoughts, actions. I want to take the TAGCLOUD to the next level, and develop a mechanism for presenting dynamic & moving / changing tagclouds in real-time so that I could essentially be READING TAGCLOUDS dynamically as they move within the confines of the screen.

Other keyphrases that I find show individuals possessed with genius: It comes from the website for Airborne Mobile, Inc. In the section called "Our Story", they used the terms "revenue generating legacy products" and "mobile products and business models", i.e. "the next big mobile product". I just liked the sound of those words.. i.e. "new product initiatives". I really get a sense of their great credibility at Airborne Mobile, Inc.

Other than that, there's not much going on with me. I read and write and surf the web a lot to satisfy my unquenchable information needs / appetite. Jeffrey Bussgang has just written a book called Mastering The VC Game which "tells the backstory of Twitter from the perspective of founder Jack Dorsey" (from TechCrunch.com).