Approximately 30 million people world-wide use the Internet and online
services daily. The Net is growing exponentially in all areas, and a
rapidly increasing number of people are finding themselves working and
playing on the Internet. The people on the Net are not all rocket
scientists and computer programmers; they're graphic designers, teachers,
students, artists, musicians, feminists, Rush Limbaugh-fans, and your next
door neighbors. What these diverse groups of people have in common is their
language. The Net community exists and thrives because of effective written
communication, as on the net all you have available to express yourself are
typewritten words. If you cannot express yourself well in written language,
you either learn more effective ways of communicating, or get lost in the
shuffle.
"Netspeak" is evolving on a national and international level. The
technological vocabulary once used only by computer programmers and elite
computer manipulators called "Hackers," has spread to all users of computer
networks. The language is currently spoken by people on the Internet, and
is rapidly spilling over into advertising and business. The words "online,"
"network," and "surf the net" are occuring more and more frequently in our
newspapers and on television. If you're like most Americans, you're feeling
bombarded by Netspeak. Television advertisers, newspapers, and
international businesses have jumped on the "Information Superhighway"
bandwagon, making the Net more accessible to large numbers of not-entirely-
technically-oriented people. As a result, technological vocabulary is
entering into non-technological communication. For example, even the
archaic UNIX command "grep," (an acronym meaning Get REpeated Pattern) is
becoming more widely accepted as a synonym of "search" in everyday
communication.
The argument rages as to whether Netspeak is merely slang, or a jargon
of itself. The language is emerging based loosely upon
telecommunications vocabulary and computer jargons, with new derivations...