Surfing the talk

Website, on-line, surfing, digital ..... if only people would say what they mean. Why do we have to put up with new words every time a new technology comes along? And who needs new technology anyway?

'Need' is hardly the word for most of the things we use every day without thinking within Western society. Our ancestors lived quite successfully without electric light, gas cookers, margarine or sliced bread. For that matter, they never complained about the lack of package holidays, Sunday papers or soap operas. We use and appreciate all kinds of things that someone invented and the rest of us could have rejected, like we rejected 'squarials' and Betamax videos. Thousands of ideas are invented only to be forgotten. The 'new technology' that worries so many people consists of the few inventions that millions of people enthuse about but a few of us don't understand.

There is nothing novel about inventing new words for new technologies. In my great grandparents time there was no meaning, or a completely different meaning, to many of the terms we use in the car age. Consider -
jumping the lights
putting your foot down
stalling
revving
burning the rubber
And the ordinary telephone produced some well tried expressions. Consider -
hang up
get on the blower
receiver
give me a ring
engaged
she's on the line
The creation of new-speak for new-tech is a manifestation of living language. Existing words receive new meanings. New terms are created by inventors. Snappy words and phrases get coined by anonymous users. Our language expands to describe a whole range of new widgets and new experiences.

The computer age has already produced massive crops of new words. Even the word 'computer' itself began as nothing more than the American word for an office clerk; and few of us now quibble about the word 'keyboard'. Now, suddenly, we are facing a flood of ideas that burst on the scene so fast that the world of invention must have gone crazy. It hasn't gone crazy, and it hasn't been that fast. The fact is that most of the things that go to make up the Internet have been in existence or in development for many years. What has happened is that they came together - and they fitted!

The 'Internet' began as a way of linking distantly separate computers together for military purposes. They wanted connections that would defy nuclear attack by using several different routes to make the connection. If one route was destroyed the alternatives would keep the systems in communication. The 'world-wide web' was the name given to an invention of an institution that brought together international scientists who had many different computer brands but needed them to 'talk' to one another. They wanted connections that would ignore the differences in brand and design. The Internet and the world-wide-web met similar needs, which is why the names are now used interchangeably. It was not long before universities and colleges caught onto the potential and a lively new generation adopted international computer networking.

How do computers communicate across the world? Much the same as you do. They pick up the telephone. Some of them have lines that stay connected all day. Some of them dial up and start 'talking' just when they need one another. Some computers remain permanently joined together in a small 'network' in one building. Many of the distant connections are made between networks, rather than just single computers. The Internet is a vast network linking very growing numbers of computers and small networks across the world. It has grown beyond national boundaries and market controls. No-one owns it and no-one steers it. Its dynamism results from millions of individual, and very creative, users who use it every day and influence its growth and development.

When someone uses the Internet they are 'on line'. If they decide to order something from a commercial supplier or advertiser they place an 'on line order'. If they type a letter and send it from their computer to someone else's, they are sending electronic mail, shortened to 'email'.

Email is the most popular application used on the Internet today. It is possible because someone invented a coding system that enabled individual users to be given a unique reference that would work like a post-code. It consists of their name, followed by an @ symbol, then the code for the site where they work (or where they dial into). Establishments fit into broader categories like education, or companies, or government etc. resulting in a short suffix like .edu or .co or .gov etc. Finally there is a code for the country the 'home' site is in (unless the site has a 'top level' web address ending in com). All these components make up the email 'address'.

Once you have an effective addressing system that can reliably sort correspondence you can send email to the right person. It won't fall through their letterbox, but they can 'collect' it if they 'log on' to the computer that holds their messages. Logging on means using phone line to dial in and connect with the distant computer. The user enters a password so the host computer 'knows' that the caller has the right to receive a particular message. The email is delivered.

But communication does not just consist of sending letters to one another. We communicate by publishing books and magazines. We communicate by advertising. We communicate by producing TV programmes. Within the Internet these appear within 'websites'. A website is a magazine page that someone has created as a message to lots of people. They want people to dial in, not to collect individual mail messages, but to see whatever the 'page' creator wants to show them. 'Pages' can be static displays of text and pictures, or they can include moving pictures and sounds.

So we have a new medium for mass communication or for individual messaging. It uses some fancy new words, but it is sufficiently easy to use for millions of people to love it and live with it. No-one is obliged to use it any more than we have to own and use a motor car. But is exists; it will remain; and it will change the way people communicate and trade from now on.

©Derrick Phillips
October 1998