New terminology helps people come to terms with a wired age
New terminology helps people come to terms with a wired age
By Lisa Belkin
People are coming up with new terminology to deal with a wired (and wireless) age. And they have names for many of the new concepts in the wired world. The longest list comes from Eve Fox (I can fit only part of it here), a VP for electronic campaigns at M&R Strategic Services in Washington, who suggests a whole new language. She calls it "Blang,'' as in "Web language,'' and says it is spoken by "Web wraiths'' Tolkienesque creatures ( i.e., most of us) who feel chained to their computers day and night. Other Blang words include: Cybermoment: Confusion that arises when one person closes an instant-messaging window and the other person keeps "talking.'' Cylences: The long gaps in phone conversation that occur when a person is reading e-mail or cybershopping at the same time. Stripped: The opposite of wired, when your computer tells you that there are wireless networks all around, but not one is accessible without a password, or when your computer tells you it has a signal, but won't connect for reasons it refuses to share. Schoogle: A popular pastime, consisting of Googling the names of old classmates. Johnny Wong, a PR consultant from California, suggests "Unamailer'' to describe "someone who replies to e-mail with one-word responses. Right. Good. Thanks.'' Ray Symmes, a business consultant in Portsmouth suggests a simi lar term. "BlackBerried,'' he writes, is "a short and possibly patronising response to a thoughtful e-mail, suggesting it was received on a mobile device: 'Good anal. of world hunger. thks.' '' David Bernklau, a freelance copy editor and sometime statistics instructor from Brooklyn, is distressed at what passes for grammar and syntax online. "Cyberdysgraphia'' is his word to de scribe the use of the internet, especially e-mail, "without regard to grammar, punctuation and capitalisation.'' I can only imagine how cyberdysgraphics would botch the spelling of cyberdysgraphia. From Sesha Kalapatapu, a Houston lawyer, comes "chimping,'' which describes the hunched-over, thumb-tapping action of a BlackBerry obsessive. Kalapatapu notes that he got the phrase from his wife, who got it from a professor at the University of Michigan, who learned it from his teenage daughter, who uses it to describe text-messaging under the desk during class. Scott Freiman, for one, runs Second Act Studio in Irvington, New York, where he composes and edits sound for film. Among his suggestions: Earburst: A sharp pain in the ear caused by accidentally hitting the volume control on your iPod. Can also be caused by cellphone distortion. Capitalia: Using only capital letters in e-mail, as if sending telegrams. Wirenia: A hernia caused by carrying too many mobile devices on your belt. Richard Ellenson, too, feels fondness for technology even as he suggests the word Google-icious to describe the selfabsorbed pride people feel when Googling themselves. But the last word in this review of words belongs to Michael Levy, director of travel training for the New York City Transit Authority, who is legally blind. "The cyberworld appropriates words from other contexts," he writes. "The word 'virtuoso' comes to mind. It could now mean somebody who is more comfortable in the virtual world than in the real world.'' NYT News Service
(Times of India/Mumbai/24.04.2006/pg31)
By Lisa Belkin
People are coming up with new terminology to deal with a wired (and wireless) age. And they have names for many of the new concepts in the wired world. The longest list comes from Eve Fox (I can fit only part of it here), a VP for electronic campaigns at M&R Strategic Services in Washington, who suggests a whole new language. She calls it "Blang,'' as in "Web language,'' and says it is spoken by "Web wraiths'' Tolkienesque creatures ( i.e., most of us) who feel chained to their computers day and night. Other Blang words include: Cybermoment: Confusion that arises when one person closes an instant-messaging window and the other person keeps "talking.'' Cylences: The long gaps in phone conversation that occur when a person is reading e-mail or cybershopping at the same time. Stripped: The opposite of wired, when your computer tells you that there are wireless networks all around, but not one is accessible without a password, or when your computer tells you it has a signal, but won't connect for reasons it refuses to share. Schoogle: A popular pastime, consisting of Googling the names of old classmates. Johnny Wong, a PR consultant from California, suggests "Unamailer'' to describe "someone who replies to e-mail with one-word responses. Right. Good. Thanks.'' Ray Symmes, a business consultant in Portsmouth suggests a simi lar term. "BlackBerried,'' he writes, is "a short and possibly patronising response to a thoughtful e-mail, suggesting it was received on a mobile device: 'Good anal. of world hunger. thks.' '' David Bernklau, a freelance copy editor and sometime statistics instructor from Brooklyn, is distressed at what passes for grammar and syntax online. "Cyberdysgraphia'' is his word to de scribe the use of the internet, especially e-mail, "without regard to grammar, punctuation and capitalisation.'' I can only imagine how cyberdysgraphics would botch the spelling of cyberdysgraphia. From Sesha Kalapatapu, a Houston lawyer, comes "chimping,'' which describes the hunched-over, thumb-tapping action of a BlackBerry obsessive. Kalapatapu notes that he got the phrase from his wife, who got it from a professor at the University of Michigan, who learned it from his teenage daughter, who uses it to describe text-messaging under the desk during class. Scott Freiman, for one, runs Second Act Studio in Irvington, New York, where he composes and edits sound for film. Among his suggestions: Earburst: A sharp pain in the ear caused by accidentally hitting the volume control on your iPod. Can also be caused by cellphone distortion. Capitalia: Using only capital letters in e-mail, as if sending telegrams. Wirenia: A hernia caused by carrying too many mobile devices on your belt. Richard Ellenson, too, feels fondness for technology even as he suggests the word Google-icious to describe the selfabsorbed pride people feel when Googling themselves. But the last word in this review of words belongs to Michael Levy, director of travel training for the New York City Transit Authority, who is legally blind. "The cyberworld appropriates words from other contexts," he writes. "The word 'virtuoso' comes to mind. It could now mean somebody who is more comfortable in the virtual world than in the real world.'' NYT News Service
(Times of India/Mumbai/24.04.2006/pg31)
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