Techno-Speak
Kirt's Cogitations™ #199

RF Cafe University "Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and "Tech Topics Smorgasbord" are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37

< Previous Next >

Techno-Speak

The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, "the gold standard of American dictionaries," has added more than 2,000 new words to the latest printing. Among them are many techno-speak terms like: adbot, blogosphere, Bluetooth, code monkey, dataveillance, hacktivist, infoholic, lurker, malware, megapixel, phishing, RFID, snert, and wiki. Polito-speak words include: al Qaeda, antiterrorism, bunkerbuster, faith-based, Falun Gong, frankenfood, Gitmo, hate crime, intelligent design and greenwash. Popular culture has given birth to the officially recognized new words: 9/11, air rage, Amber alert, conflict diamond, death metal, fake bake, permatemp, reality TV, road rage, safe room, sizeism, smart mob, smokeasy, supersize, Texas Hold 'em, trustafarian, and barista. If you find this comical, then maybe some of these new funny words will amuse you even more: buckle bunny, cankle, clueful, cone of silence, FUD, ginormous, Joe Schmo, ka-ching, labradoodle, noogie, prairie-dogging, Raelian, shojo, snivel gear and unobtainium. Being at a loss for words is getting harder all the time.

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...