Baron’s Always on: Language in an online and mobile world describes the effects communication technologies have on language and explains how language practices influence our social interactions. Throughout the book, the author uses current and historical anecdotes involving individuals facing new technologies in order to place online communication platforms on a continuum of altered behavioral and social norms. In the first chapter, Baron summarizes the (less) obvious effects of communication technologies on language and linguistic practices: lower cost, ease of authorship, compromised safety/privacy, “controlling the ‘volume’ on our social interaction” (p. 5), decreasing quality and increasing quantity of writing, and the redefinition of face-to-face interaction. These themes resurface in every chapter, whether it is an empirical chapter or a more generalized analysis.

Chapter 2 provides the reader with the basic information on how new technologies came into existence, locates them on a historical timeline, and paints a skeletal image of these communication tools. The following chapter deciphers the ways the volume-control metaphor has permeated our lives and unravels the notion of affordance and the negative effects of linguistic multitasking on interpersonal communication. In chapter 4 instant messages (IM) are linguistically evaluated and then placed on a speech-to-writing continuum. Supplementing her research, Baron brings in cross-cultural studies on writing for the discussion of gender, a significant variable in message writing. The following chapter studies the presentation of self through “away messages” in IM and Facebook, which allow individuals to show themselves as they wish via information control. Chapter 6 provides us with an overview of social circles such as blogs, YouTube, and Wikipedia, all having historical precedents in offering entertainment, education, free speech, authorship, and companionship. The next chapter explores communication and the social dynamics of mobile phone usage in a certain cross-cultural and historic milieu through the leitmotif of social control/volume in comparative studies. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 offer reflections on the power to and ease of controlling social interactions and the influence of Internet on offline writing, and suggests a linguistic laissez-faire attitude toward language rules. Taking the last two chapters to a more general level, Baron contemplates written culture, the value of written words, and the challenges new technologies present to the maintenance of these values. Concluding with a discussion of the personal, ethical, and cognitive costs of being always on, the author leaves the reader with the idea that individuals can and do control their communication, and it might be premature to evaluate the long-term impact of new language technologies.

Baron underlines that her book is written for a variety of readers. It serves technologically inexperienced parents, teachers, and others who may seek academic validation for their communicative practices; it gives introductory courses an overview of old and new technologies animated with anecdotes, interesting statistics, and empirical studies, with frequent summaries of previously expended ideas. Consequently, the style of writing is conversational. Baron sometimes sounds apologetic for her data collection, and at times her writing is infused with nostalgic undertones alluding to a period when reading and writing acted as catalysts for more carefully contemplated behavioral and social interaction.