Jargon watch
Fra Harald Grovens wiki
Nyord innen IT
Wiredmag har i ti år hatt gående en spalte med pussige nyord som (oftest) beskriver fenomener innen IT-bransjen. Her er en liste over noen av de beste. I 1999 skrev jeg en artikkel i Utropia med oversettelser av noen av de beste. (pdf-fil) Artikkelen er litt gammelmodig nå, ettersom den ble skrevet under dotcomtida.
Spendorphins The pleasure proteins that seem to be released during a shopping frenzy.
Brandwidth The theoretical limit of a product's expandability into different media, venues, market segments, et cetera. "Hello Kitty has a shockingly large brandwidth."
Buzzword-Compliant When a product is said by its maker to work with all the standards and tech trends du jour.
Career-Limiting Move (CLM) Used among microserfs to describe an ill-advised activity. Trashing your boss while he or she is within earshot is a serious CLM.
Irritainment Annoying entertainment and media spectacles you're unable to stop watching. O.J. is a prime example.
Adminisphere The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
Stage-Phoning Pretending to talk on a cell phone to impress bystanders. As British researcher Sadie Plant noted, “Some mobile users tend to make a virtue of the lack of privacy by stage-phoning.”
Architecture Police An individual or group within a company that makes sure software and hardware development follows established corporate guidelines. The architecture police also rein in excessively creative development efforts in conservative organizations.
Idea Hamster Someone who always seems to have his or her idea generator running. "That guy's a real idea hamster. Give him a raw concept and he'll turn it over 'til he comes up with something useful."
Seagull Manager A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, shits all over everything, then leaves.
Geeksploitation The act of taking advantage of twentysomething digital workers who are flushed with pioneer enthusiasm and willing to work very long hours if bolstered by junk food, flexible work schedules, and no dress code.
Salmon Day The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed in the end.
Interrupt-Driven Used to describe someone who moves through a workday responding to a series of interruptions rather than the work goals originally set.
Alpha Geek The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. "Ask Larry, he's the alpha geek around here."
Panic Merchants Businesses, media outlets, and morality groups that make their living by capitalizing on common fears and anxieties. AIDS, escalating crime, ecological degradation, porn on the Internet, and antisocial rap lyrics are some of the fears exploited by panic merchants.
Spamouflage Bulk email messages delivered from generic email addresses with innocuous subject headers in order to confound filtering programs and spam-hating readers.
Stasi-ware What David Banisar of EPIC calls Hewlett-Packard's proposed International Cryptography Framework, which would require the use of government-approved "policy activation tokens" to enable the encryption system. Stasi refers to the former East German secret police.
Tweak Freak A computer techie obsessed with finding the root of all tech problems, regardless of the relevance. A tweak freak might spend hours trying to track down something that could instantly be fixed by reinstalling the software.
FAWOMFT Stands for "Frequently Argued Waste Of My Fucking Time." A recurring argument that, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps going, and going, and going. "The alt .cyberpunk debate over why Gibson doesn't have an e-mail address is a FAWOMFT."
Kodak Courage An extra dose of courage and the tendency to go beyond one's usual physical limits when being filmed or photographed (from action sports such as skateboarding, snowboarding, and extreme skiing).
Mommy-Save The act of indiscriminately clicking Save without first choosing an appropriate folder to store the document in. Common among newbies (e.g., your mother) who don't understand the concept of folders, directories, et cetera. "All of his papers and correspondence were mommy-saved in the MS Word folder."
Circle-Jerking The practice, used on some porn sites, of redirecting visitors back to the same site when they try to exit via ad banners for different sites. Circle-jerking raises the hit count of the offending site and drives up its ranking on top-site lists.
Weapons-Grade Stupidity Tech-support slang for customer intelligence that is so low it poses a severe hazard to those who come in contact with it.
Berlin Firewall An Internet gateway that allows only the most basic port operations (mail, Web, limited news). Usually run by retentive sysadmins who hate the idea of anybody actually telnetting anywhere.
Speako A typo made by a speech-recognition program.
Sudden Reputation Death Syndrome The complete and instantaneous loss of all credibility, support, and near-term job prospects after being caught up in a high-profile scandal (e.g., Enron's Kenneth Lay and Clinton adviser Dick Morris).
Warnock's Dilemma The act of choosing whether the lack of response to a discussion-list post is because of its brilliance (there's nothing to add) or because of its stupidity (it doesn't deserve comment). Named after Brian Warnock, who first described the condition on a Perl list.
Repetitive Brain Injury The psychological damage that can be done to telephone operators, tech-support personnel, and others who have to answer the same dumb questions over and over again.
Upgradathon A race that begins after you've upgraded one piece of hardware or software, which necessitates more upgrades, ad infinitum.
Drownloading Simultaneously downloading so many MP3s, programs, image files, et cetera, that your computer crashes.
JSO Job-shaped object. An employee, often a high-ranking one, who appears to do little more than show up for work.
One-Tweak Loop A regression of "one more fix" that seemingly extends a project indefinitely.
Guilt-Free Vacationing Corporate policy that expressly asks employees not to bring work on vacation with them and not to use their laptops, pagers, and cell phones to check in with the office.
Postmortem Divorce A phenomenon among Japanese women who, unhappy in their marriages, secretly arrange to have themselves buried anywhere but beside their husbands.
Market-Leninism Replacing Marxist-Leninism as the new governing style of China. Combines the iron fist political rule of Leninism with the wide-open economic permissiveness of free-market capitalism. Think Singapore.
