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Griefer, Google Cooking and other Neologisms

Note: This piece was broadcast on Word of Mouth on New Hampshire Public Radio and on WCVE in Richmond VA.
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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To friend or not to friend: Judith Donath on online social status

Have you “friended” someone recently? Have you ever? Sooner or later, we’ll all start to friend, or be friended, if we are to inhabit the jolly online world of social networking. MIT Media Lab’s Judith Donath explains….

Click here: (4:17 minutes)


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More Neologisms with TPM’s Josh Marshall

Here are a few more thoughts on new words gleaned from life online — gathered at a Berkman Center conference on The Future of the Internet!
Joshua Micah Marshall, who founded the influential site Talking Points Memo discusses the term “blogger”, a now old neologism that may have outgrown its usefulness, at least to him!
Click here: (2:30 minutes) to listen. And let us know if you agree!



And here on this YouTube video, Josh Marshall tells Jenny Attiyeh how he came up with the name “Talking Points Memo”…



Plus:

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Tim Wu’s neologism: Network neutrality!

NOTE: Tim Wu has a new book out, called The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires!

The term network neutrality was the brainchild of Tim Wu of Columbia Law School. So what does this term mean, and what power does it have?

Click here: (2:23 minutes)

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In Search of Neologisms with Esther Dyson

Neologisms are defined as new words or phrases (or new uses of a word or phrase). And what better place to find them than at a gathering of netizens (itself a neologism) steeped in the new world of the “net”. The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, and ThoughtCast was there, fishing for novelty…
The Catch:
Internet guru Esther Dyson came up with an expression I’d never heard before… Have you? Here’s a clue: what does Google have to do with your refrigerator??!!
Click here: (1 minute) to find out!
But wait, there’s more!

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The Borromeo String Quartet Meets Steve Reich!

Note: So far, this piece has been broadcast on the following public radio stations:  New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word of Mouth,  WDAV’s Artist Spotlight, Tapestry on 90.3 WBHM in Birmingham Alabama, WRVO in Upstate NY and KUAR, in Little Rock!

Steve Reich is perhaps the preeminent composer living today. And one of his most heart-wrenching and affecting works is called Different Trains for String Quartet and Tape. It tells the story of Steve Reich’s early childhood — his train trips between the East and West coasts to visit his separated parents — and also of the train trips Jews were forced to take during the Holocaust.

The piece, commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 1988, is notoriously difficult to play. But the Borromeo String Quartet has recently taken up the challenge. ThoughtCast’s Jenny Attiyeh attended a rehearsal at the New England Conservatory, where the Borromeo is currently in residence.

Click here: to listen — (7 minutes) on ThoughtCast!

Click here: for a shorter version (4:30 mins.)