why so?

So apparently, our use of the world "so" is changing. It's sneaking into the beginning of more and more of our sentences, where it can denote many things: a conclusion, a transition, a flash of insight. Anand Giridharadas speculates on the reasons for its rise:

To answer a ques­tion start­ing with “well” sug­gests you are still con­sid­er­ing it, don’t know fully but are get­ting there. To answer with “so” bet­ter suits the age, per­haps: A Google-glued gen­er­a­tion can look it up where their par­ents would have said “I don’t know,” Face­book and Twit­ter encour­age ordi­nary peo­ple and not just politi­cians to stay on mes­sage, and we grav­i­tate toward declam­a­tory blogs and away from down-the-middle reporting. “So” also echoes the influ­ence of a sci­ence– and data-driven cul­ture.

But that's just one explanation; there are others.