#145 The Algorithm is God Now - The Etymology Nerd
3/4/20261 hr 16 min
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- VIDEO NOTES
Adam Aleksic, known online as Etymology Nerd, is an American linguist and content creator who produces videos exploring the origins of words. He began exploring word origins in 2016 through his blog. Aleksic studied at Harvard University, where he gained attention...
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First 90 secondsAlex O'Connor· Host0:00
Adam Alecsik, welcome back to the show.
Adam Aleksic· Guest0:02
Thank you. So excited to be back.
Alex O'Connor· Host0:03
Yeah, the etymology nerd. Again, for those who aren't aware, since we last spoke, you published a book, AlgoSpeak, and we were just talking about how I sort of managed to interview you just before you kind of were doing the press for that, and now again just after you doing the press for that. But it's still available, so, you know, check it out in the description. Um, AlgoSpeak is kind of about the way that social media is influencing our language. People talk a lot about how, like, you know, the, the dialect of the kids is, is going down the pan because of the way that the internet is changing how we speak. To what extent do you think social media is just a continuation of the way that young people are always adapting language versus it being, like, actually a distinctive, like, linguistic moment?
Adam Aleksic· Guest0:50
Yeah. Well, I mean, 100% it is both at the same time. There will always be a need among children to differentiate themselves from adults to build a shared identity for themselves. So that's not new. Kids have always been coming up with new slang. But I am a strong believer that the medium is the message, and that the way that the medium is organized will affect the way we communicate. So when we had more oral tradition, we would tell our stories differently. We would use rhyme and meter. When we had paper, we would, uh, segment our stories into chapters. And once we moved to the internet, we finally had this opportunity for the written replication of informal speech. And algorithms, I think, are similarly an inflection point kind