************************************************************** * * * CYBERSPACE * * A biweekly column on net culture appearing * * in the Toronto Sunday Sun * * * * Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer * * Free for online distribution * * All Rights Reserved * * Direct comments and questions to: * * * * * ************************************************************** I write for a newspaper so it should come as no big shock that I love the printed word. Despite dire predictions that the net and push technologies like PointCast would be the death of black squiggles on handy coffee-absorbing paper, newspaper revenues keep growing while the venture capitalists have switched from backing push start ups to these infernal "portal sites". Being able to express your ideas in clear or interesting ways is still more important than being able to load up a web page with animated GIF files. The net has been and continues to be all about having fun with the written word. Generating new words seems to be the central preoccupation of many in the high tech world. It can be hard to keep up. Luckily, there's a couple good high tech dictionaries available online at www.currents.net/resources/dictionary/dictionary.phtml and www.techweb.com/encyclopedia. One of my favorite regular features in Wired magazine (www.wired.com) is the Jargon Watch section. I've submitted about a dozen terms to the section and I've only managed to get two published. They're so picky! Wired seemed to like "YODA" (Young Opinionated but Directionless Artsie: a person that doesn't do much else but sit in a cafe and spout all sorts of wisdom about what government and business should be doing to make life better) but rejected "zealrut" (a tendency on net.news to find yourself repeating the same arguments over and over again on a newsgroup every time a new crop of users join). My favorite term from Jargon Watch is "Blame-Storming": getting a group of people together to figure out who is to blame for a messed up project. If you have an eye for neologisms, both computer and non- computer related, The Word Spy page (www.mcfedries.com/WordSpy/) might be a better place for submitting and discussing them. Users submit terms they've either cooked up or have discovered in use in the popular press. One of the cuter ones is "Baby Bills", a suggested term for Microsoft spin off companies should the U.S. Justice Department ever force it into an AT&T-style break up. Neologisms are fun but there's a couple hundred thousand words in the traditional English language I haven't gotten to yet. When I want to look up a real word, Merriam-Webster's online dictionary (www.m-w.com/netdict.htm) is pretty handy. I actually have a paper edition of Merriam-Webster's dictionary right behind me but i haven't opened it in months. I'm that much of a geek. The online variant is handy to copy and paste from and it provides the word's etymology, something a lot of cheap paper dictionaries lack. Knowing where a word comes from adds a dimension to a term that can't be easily encapsulated in the definition section. A fun way to tease out a term's hidden meaning is seeing what kind of anagram you can get by rearranging the letters. Its pretty easy to determine "lark" is an anagram for "Karl" but it the process of generating anagrams for longer terms is laborious. Thankfully the Anagram server at www.wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html can quickly generate anagrams for terms of any length. For example, who would have ever guessed "Nose Onto Truth " hides in "The Toronto Sun"? Did you ever doubt it? Being a heavy user of IRC these days, I find myself more and more encountering people who's first language is not English. Its always nice to try to say a few words in the person's mother tongue. But after 8 years of French education in Quebec, I have to admit I'm never going to be a polyglot. I'd be hard pressed to carry on even a basic conversation in French. I know the French word for "milk". And I know enough swear words that I could engage in some road rage on St. Catherines in both official languages. Other than that I'd be lost if it wasn't for the AltaVista Search engine's translation utility at babelfish.altavista.com. Some say the language of love is universal but the people who say that are probably a lot better looking than me. If I'm going to fall in love with someone who doesn't speak English, I don't want there to be any confusion. I want to know I'm really saying "I love you" and not "I want to paint a squirrel with the blood of my ancestors". The Alt.Romance FAQ at www.landfield.com/faqs/romance-faq/part3/section-1.html lists how to say "I love you" in languages ranging from Albanian ("Te dua") to Zulu ("Mena tanda wena").