Digital parlance #76

• Vampire appliances: appliances that use electricity even when they are off as these are often in standby mode such as a TV, a home assistant or anything with a timer. Smartphone and PC charger also use power even when they are not being charged, still plugged into the wall.

• Birchpunk : portmanteau word made of “birch” (birch tree) and “punk” (for cyberpunk) that designate a contemporary form of cyberpunk technological imaginary located in the countryside (Source: Birchpunk YouTube).

• Stacktivism: a term coined by Jay Springett “that attempts to give form to a critical conversation & line of enquiry (infra-spection?) around infrastructure & the relationship we have to it.” (Source: #stacktivism)

• Nonograms (aka Picross, Griddlers, Pic-a-Pix, Logimage) : picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid must be colored or left blank according to numbers at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden picture. (Source: Come Internet with Me).

• “To Gloom” : “verb indicating deception in online teaching with Zoom where most, if not all, the participants are represented by a wall of black tiles with merely a name or a picture, not necessarily theirs. Situation generalised mostly following the coronavirus pandemic situation of 2020 when most courses were shifted online almost overnight not allowing for a proper redesigned pedagogy” (Source: via Jean-Henry Morin)

Digital parlance #73

• Staatstrojaner: literally “State Trojan Horse”, employed to refer to malware/spyware used by intelligence agencies in Germany (such Militärgeheimdienst or Verfassungsschutz) to track computers of people under suspicion. (Source: netzpolitik et Techtrash). See also Bundestrojaner in Switzerland or Germany for an earlier version.

• Quantifauxcation" describes situations in which a number is, in effect, made up, and then is given credence merely because it is quantitative. Quantifauxcation seems to be more persuasive the more complex and contrived the process of making up the number: numbers derived from survey data, from statistical formulae, and from computer models comprise large classes.

• Bloatware : Unwanted software included on a new computer or mobile device by the manufacturer (whose usefulness is reduced because of the excessive disk space and memory it require). Also refers to the process whereby successive versions of a computer program become perceptibly slower, use more memory, disk space or processing power, or have higher hardware requirements than the previous version. Sometimes translated by “logiciel mémorivore”, “obésiciel” or “inflagiciel” in French (Source: Office québecois de la langue française).

• Meitu-ify: a verb that designate the modification of one’s facial appearance before sharing it online, a term proposed by Cai Wensheng, Meitu’s chairman, that he also see as a "way of being polite" like you'd tell a friend if her shirt was missing a button, or her pants were unzipped, as he told The New Yorker” (Source: NYR).

• Reply guy: a neologism that described how certain male users of social networking sites tend to reply, no matter what, to almost all the messages shared by women. An annoying practice since the replies often ranges from gaslighting to trolling or mansplaining (Source: Mashable). See also “the nine types of Reply Guy” here.