Hi everyone welcome to the A6 and Z podcast I am Sono and today we have a sort of

holiday special episode a real celebration or maybe not a celebration actually and

it's all about the key words, metaphors, and tools of the year, including of course the underlying

tech shifts.

And our guest is Gretchen McCulloch, who is widely described as an internet linguist.

She has a master in linguistics and also wrote the

New York time best-selling book because internet understanding the new rules of

language last year and because she's so enthusiastic about linguistics she also

has a podcast that she

co-created called Lincusism. We spend roughly the first half of this

hallway style conversation doing a whirlwind tour through the words and

metaphors of the year chunked into the themes of

remote work the pandemic of course and scientific discourse key cultural

concepts and shifts and a couple quick personal favorites and then in the second

half we go meta probing a bit more deeply into how tech tools change conversation and social dynamics online.

For further context, Gretchen also wrote an op-ed and Wired where she's a columnist on the rise of

so-called proximity chat as part of her mission to make virtual parties fun

including suggesting the need for digital cheese plates which we'll briefly talk

about.

So we spend some time talking about the idea of a third place and how those concepts and interfaces

have evolved along with the metaphors, ending finally on how writing itself is a technology, how it evolved, and the

OG network effect of language. So that's the intro. Welcome, Gretchen.

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