When I saw this post on my official blogging platform in my organization, I was so awestruck by it that I asked the permission of the original author – Akila Narayanan to post this on my blog as a Guest Post and she immediately agreed. So here goes.
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Born in the borderline of Gen X and Gen Y, I wonder how certain words and symbols have changed meanings as if the vocabulary has also grown up with radical societal and technology transformations.
Mouse – Teachers introduced it as a cute creature having a pointed nose and a thread like tail. Parents introduced it as Lord Vinayaka’s companion but when visited home, instead of welcoming as guest, wooed with coconut and trapped it in a cage considering the colossal damage they can cause to the groceries. Walt Disney gave it a different color as Mickey Mouse. Someone introduced them as the preferred specimen for lab tests. Not surprising though, Google displays the first search record for this term as a computing device.
Cell – How much my memory hated those biology classes and fancy terms that were taught with Amoeba cell being one? Cells made their cameo appearance in movies when our honest hero gets arrested by a corrupt official, an aide of the ‘mottai’ villian. Cells made a solid reentry during engineering course to generate electric currents and shocked me quite often. Now they wiped out everything else to denote nothing but mobile phones.
Mobile – Excavations show no evidence of this term being linked with the cell. As of date, it has become the namesake of cell phone. Once upon a time, they denoted something that can be set in motion.
Net – My fond memories dates back to the days when Steffi Graf or Andre Agassi hit a volley over the net. We purchased one to tackle the mosquitoes at home. Then they ended up showing their ugly face when I was struggling to tally the net result in mathematics exam. Later Inter married the net and then they still live happily together.
Mail, Book, Learning… – Terms like these have been like the NRIs whose accent changes when they migrate to a different country, far away from roots. From handwritten letters, printed material, classroom setups, they have adapted to the changing times migrating from the physical world to the ‘e-world’.
Few more interesting immigrants are the likes of ‘Games’ and ‘Media’. Self-explanatory and no further elaboration needed.
Social – More associated with the subject ‘social science’, the first phrase I remember learning with respect to this regard is, ‘Man is a social animal’. I developed a hatred for this term during childhood days when peers accused me of being indisputably non social. I never dreamt that virtual relationships would become a reality someday, the whole world would be wrapped in the networking ‘web’ (another term of interest in our context) and I would shake hands and make at least some peace with ‘social’.
Like (+1), Hash (#), At (@)… – A separate post can be done on terms like these that have been rechristened by web, social networking and virtual collaboration culture. I learnt hash when I first mispronounced C# as C hash instead of C sharp. They stormed into social world for tagging and grouping a category of unstructured messages. I associate them more with phones as I predominantly use them to dial in passcode during conference calls or to mute the line where they have a pet name ‘pound’.
Cloud – This is the natural choice for drawing those sceneries in drawing competitions at school. Now their meaning itself is clouded by technology overcasts
Proposal, Engagement, Bandwidth, Bench, Service… – Not to forget a laundry list of terms that take different meaning in our industry context… From ‘stand up on the bench’ to ‘being idle on bench’, from ‘offering marriage’ to ‘winning business’…
With no exaggerations, if someone utters these words, ‘Word’ or ‘Excel’ or ‘Outlook’ at workplace, I am instantly reminded of the Microsoft counterparts. Someone rightly said, ‘Life was much simpler when Apple and Blackberry were just fruits‘
Gay – Ha ha … One term that I pity the most is this. I mean how something as happy, glitzy and gaiety as this can transform into…….
Hmmm… Change is constant… It’s fascinating that these two contrasting terms always go together
Image courtesy: http://www.cartoonstock.com
