A Whole New World

So, in my Human Geography class, I learned about how languages were used to give people a shared sense of identity. Western Europe, for instance, is grouped as such because the dominant languages of those countries have a common ancestry – Latin. The same goes with the Middle East – Hebrew/Arabic….and the Orient (but I forget what their language was called).

As a result, I realized that, in this sense, E-mail and internet users could also be identified as a community…if I’m correct, e-mail was the first mainstream, online networking and communications tool to be introduced to the world…as such, the use of a common e-language is what was able to bring people together and identify them as a particular community.


Lol. Wtf. Omg. Rotfl. Before these terms were appropriated by pop culture, for instance, and used in the spoken language (as they are today), they were only used online…and as a result, in order to know and understand what they meant, you had to be an active e-mail user. This created a language boundary between those who existed in the physical world and those who also existed in the virtual realm…which, in turn, further defined e-mail and internet users as a distinct and separate community. I remember when I was younger and had just got my first e-mail account, for instance, I didn’t know what half of these acronyms meant! (I thought lol meant “lots of love”…so I would use it every time to when I signed out at the bottom of the page). As a result, in order to communicate with others and become a part of this community myself, I had to learn the language.

Another thing which helps define e-mail and internet users as a separate community is the fact they also have a commonly understood code of behaviour; this is what is called netiquette (internet + etiquette). I actually found a list of 15 rules to proper netiquette which I will post on a separate blog.

As a result, it is clear we can see that e-mail was much more than just a tool for communications. Although it is slowly being replaced by other social networking sites as a method for online communications (Facebook comes to mind), it is evident that, without it, the world we have today would not be quite the same.