Griefer, Google Cooking and other Neologisms

 
 Neologisms [3:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Note: This piece was broadcast on Word of Mouth on New Hampshire Public Radio and on WCVE in Richmond VA.

been there - done that
Today’s online world is in overdrive. Think of it as a novelty factory – spewing out new ideas, products, and neologisms – new words, or phrases. Take the word blog, for example, or broadband. These are now old-hat neologisms even my mother would recognize. But neologisms can also be existing words that acquire new meaning, like the term spam. Or the word friend – that’s now a verb! People friend each other on social networking sites like Facebook all the time!
So what better place to look for neologisms than at a conference devoted to the “Future of the Internet”, held by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Click here: to listen to Esther Dyson, Jimmy Wales, Tim Wu and Judith Donath (4 minutes). Or check out this 1 minute video with MIT Media Lab assoc. professor and Harvard fellow Judith Donath…


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One Response to “Griefer, Google Cooking and other Neologisms”

  1. Linda Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 10:29 pm

    I have searched all over the internet and even the oldest dictionaries available and I cannot find a definition for the word “wherehow”. It is not an old word as no one used it. But people are using it now , it’s all over different websites — unless it is a chain of coincidental typos. But recently I also saw it in print in a publication that doesn’t do typos. So it must be a new one. Do you know where this term originated and sort of what it means? please let my mom know at the above address. Thanks. Linda

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