What’s in a (digital) word?
The English language is a dynamic one with new words and phrases added to our lexicon every day. That makes it a useful language, but it also makes it a vexing one for those of us who are still trying to get comfortable with yesterday’s English.
I’m still trying to warm up to the tendency to take nouns and turn them into verbs, as in “I’m tasking him to do this,” or “I’m purposing to do that.” But what a lot of us are having trouble with — and I suspect it’s especially the over-40 crowd — is the entirely new dictionary of terms that has mushroomed around the Web 2.0 media.
Finalists review words in an American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Fort Collins, Colo. So many new words and terms are being created by the digital media that it's hard to keep track of them all. (AP Photo/Douglas Healey).
Recycling some, inventing others
Some words have been “repurposed” (I’m catching on), while some have been created from the ground up. An example of the former would be “asset,” which used to be something accountants or CIA types worried about, while an example of the latter would be “vlog.”
You might want to see how many of the following dozen terms you know, and grade yourself accordingly. Following the list, you’ll find the definitions. Here we go:
Web 2.0
Aggregation
Blogroll
Vlog
Mashup
Moblogging
Newsreader
RSS
Podcast
Captcha
Cloud Computing
Social bookmarking
The Definitions
OK, let’s see how you did, starting with one of the easiest terms and moving on to ones that we sometimes bluff others into thinking we understand.
Web 2.0 Media. No exact, uniform definition but this refers to the interactive use of the Web — generally called the social use — wherein users post their own original content alongside the content of organized information providers. In a larger sense, it refers to any new Web applications, ie. anything that wasn’t there last month.
Aggregation. This refers to the gathering and remixing of information from a multitude of sources on the Web, usually via RSS (see later listing) related to the topic at hand and gathered via keywords.
Blogroll. Not a distant cousin to a bedroll, this is a list of blogger-recommended, topic-related sites that appear in the sidebar of a blog.
Vlog. A video blog as opposed to a written one.
Mashup. What your wife does to potatoes. Oh yes, and a web service or software tool used to combine two or more tools to create a whole new service. A leading example is ChicagoCrime, which merges Google Maps with the Chicago Police Department’s crim- tracking web site to offer a map of crime in different parts of Chicago.
Moblogging. We’re talking mobile blogging here, which refers to users who post updates of their blogs from a mobile device such as a cell phone. It’s blogging on the fly.
Newsreader. This is what TV news anchors are often called in Europe, but that’s another story. In Webspeak, a newsreater collects the news from several blogs or news sites via RSS, providing readers access news from a single web site. A couple wellknown online newsreaders are Pluck and Bloglines.
RSS. You may have seen these initials on your e-mail site. They denote a format for users to store online data in way that makes it readable by a large variety of software. Many blogs and web sites feature RSS feeds, which are constantly updated to keep the site’s content fresh. These feeds are provided in a form that can be read by an aggregator or newsreader.
Podcast. Either broadcasting the news from the inside of a vegetable or, more likely, the distribution of multimedia files over the Internet for playback on a mobile device or a personal computer like an iPod.
Captcha. Seems like a cousin to Gotcha, but this refers to those crazy letters and numbers you have to decipher and type in when filling out a form on the web. It is a mechanism used to check whether or not you are human (really) and is used to prevent spam.
Cloud Computing. Sounds like this refers to surfing while flying the friendly skies, but things aren’t always as they seem. Cloud Computing brings up the recent trend of using the Internet as an applicaiton platform (or cloud) like utilzing an online version of a word processor rather than using a word processor on your computer’s hard drive. Cloud Computing also refers to the use of the Web as a service, such as storing your pictures online at Flickr as opposed to storing them on your hard drive.
Social Bookmarking. No need for a social secretary here, but this term refers to storing individual pages online, allowing you to “tag” them. For users who frequently bookmark web pages, social bookmarking can provide an easier way to organize the bookmarks.
And as for that asset listed earlier, it’s been rolled into a larger term called “asset management system.” Writer A.J. van Kiekerk calls that a computer hardware system that aids in the “ingestion, annotation, cataloguing, storage, retrieval and distribution of digital assets.”
Nothing like defining a term by the term itself. Very helpful.
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Comments
There are so many media related words out there that I am not 100% sure what they mean. Some are kind of easy to figure out and some are more complicated. It is interesting to see how many made-up words are out there. It almost seems like there are going to be more miscommunication among people.
I believe with the ever-changing media landscape, eventually, these changes will transform the American English language. Already, students are turning in papers with texting jargon and many of the new slang terms have been incorporated into advertisements and personal daily conversations. I only wonder if this is a negative impact on our society or simply just that…an impact… that will transform into another impact, which will transform into another impact, and then another as new and better technologies continue to change the scope of our culture?
This article was especially informative (for us over 40 types) and really emphasizes the rapidly changing landscape of media today. Our ability to digest and understand the various new modes of communication and the language surrounding it will enable us to stay not just “hip” but help ensure that we are not left behind. Web 2.0 has afforded us the opportunity to interact virtually more than ever before, now with Web 3.0 and Connected TV we will have even more opportunities to be not only connected but the interactivity is taken to a whole new level where we will be able to order a pair of shoes that we see on an actress in our favorite show with a few clicks of our television remote control (that is definitely something I can get on board with!).
I can never seem to keep up with all the media terms. Even being a Communications Mass Media major, it is a constant battle to keep up with the terminology. Words are used to mean different things than I’m used to or words are combined to make new words, like vlog- video blog. It is interesting that our urban dictionary continues to expand not only with slang but as new technology emerges.