Digital parlance #77

• Worldscraping : a portmanteau term that refers to capturing data about the world from wearable cameras and sensors, probably via glasses. Could be useful for various applications: “archiving every word of every article and book you read for searching later, cataloging the movies and TV shows you’ve watched, saving interesting outfits and clothes you notice in shops or on passers-by, mapping your social graph based on the people you talk to on social media and in the real world, recording your cycle into work in case you get into accidents, etc.“ (Source: Adrian Hon).

• Robodebt : a neologism that corresponds to debts that appears when welfare services wrongly demand the repayment of benefits because of automated fraud detection algorithms failures. Although it can be found in the US and in European countries, the term comes from a debt recovery program in Australia that falsely accused members of the community of owing money to the Government. (Source: Algorithm watch )

• Rubber band effect: in video games, the rubber band effect in dynamic game difficulty balancing, where computer-played characters with a more severe disadvantage are harder to beat and vice versa. Also refers to this undesirable effect of latency in which a moving object appears to leap from one place to another without passing through the intervening space; also called "warping" or "teleporting" (Source: Wikipedia).

• Cyber Doula : “Being a cyber doula can take multiple forms, including demystifying internet jargon by reading terms and conditions for loved ones, or sending helpful articles to friends that encourage them to ask more introspective questions.” (Source: bitchmedia.org via Katharina Sand). See also the work of Olivia McKayla Ross.

• Numérasse : a French neologism that describes the annoying and massive amount of digital forms (online or pdf) that one has to fill for bureaucratic reasons (Source this blogpost by Florence Maraninchi). The suffix “-ass” is often employed in French for terms with a negative connotation, feel free to create odd Frenglish idioms based on that (and please send me your proposal).

Digital parlance #75

• Cellular humanities: “the cellular humanities are precisely about that to which we are not paying attention: the ubiquity of these small computers that more and more people have, as well as a cluster of mentalities, behaviors, and attitudes that develop along with the machines. They’re about how the social fabric is changing around us rapidly, and where we feel these changes the most.” (Source: Public books).

• "Munchausen-by.internet”: a term describing the pattern of behavior in factitious disorder imposed on self, wherein those affected feign illnesses in online venues (Source: The Guardian)

• Travailler d'arrache clavier: French neologism expressing the fact of working hard on one's computer, as if you were damaging the keyboard. (Source: David Aymonin)

• Prospiracy: the spreading of real information using the tone and style of conspiracy theories combining “the lure of forbidden knowledge & the highly shareable nature of conspiratorial thinking for good…” (Source: emolink)

• Bougietech: “Mennonite engineering solutions for convenient low tech living; off grid, unbanked, and unbothered.” (Source: Noah Raford, NFG)

(Reposted from Lagniappe #75)

Digital parlance #74

• Algo-friend: a friend met via a recommendation algorithm, from de Facebook to Tinder or LinkedIn. The term undoubtedly go beyond the notion of online contacts, and the sometimes simplistic accusations of "faux-friendship" about them.

• LMGTFY: acronym for Let me google that for you (Source ce tweet).

• Datenhunger: a German neologism describing the appetite for acquiring, and potentially processing and analysing, data. For example: “Googles Datenhunger ist offenkundig” (Google's hunger for data is obvious).

• Sleeper PC: an incredibly fast computer disguised as ancient 90s era beige box. It will most likely look old on the outside but be brand new on the inside, with the latest processor, RAM and GPU built into a basic shell (Source: Urban Dictionary).

• “Bisou” (used on the francophone Twittersphere): a French term that means “kiss”, used as an Antiphrasis: "Unless it is addressed directly to you, its meaning at the end of the message varies between ‘f… you' and ‘f… off’ (Source: this tweet, see also the whole thread).

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.

Weekly digital lexicon #3

Maskenfreiheit (seen here) : German term that indicates the liberty that comes from wearing a mask... and metaphorically to stay anonymous, or to partly hide one's identity in public sphere.

1701 : an adjective sometimes employed to express the "futuristic" character of an object/situation; comes from the name of Star Trek's vessel The Enterprise (NCC-1701).

Auto erect : an expression which refers to the sexual connotation implied by texts/SMS/messages transformed by the auto-correct feature.

Brouteurs : an idiom used in Côte d'Ivoire to designate people committing internet frauds (seen in a text by N’Guessan Julien Atchoua found in "Quand l’Afrique réinvente la téléphonie mobile")

MTurk Research : scientific research projects that employ crowdsourcing platforms such as Mechanical Turk, Rapidworkers, etc. (seen in this article).

Weekly digital lexicon #2

Zykluserkennungssoftware, die: German word "drive cycle recognition" software, a term used in a comment seen on Spiegel Online... that refers to software used to pass pollution tests (🚗💨)… modified by VW (so that they work only during tests).

AI trainer : a new job profile that consists in supervising/train computer programs: "A team of 'AI trainers' works with the program, and if there’s a request that M doesn’t understand the trainers take over. M then learns from what the human trainer does, and can use that technique with later requests." (seen here, thanks Fabien Girardin)

Plogging : the transposition of the (we)blogging logic to social networking platforms such as Facebook or Twitter (which may allow longer posts), seen in this article (merci Virginie Bejot)

开挂 (abbreviation of 开外挂 "kai1 gua4") : a Chinese term used to express disbelief or that something has been enhance/forged (e.g. a Photoshopped image), and which originally refers to "the act of running an illegal plug-in on a game, either for practical usability purposes (translating an interface into Chinese) or to cheat (faking in-game presence to accumulate more virtual currency, or even packet modification to make a character move faster in an online game)" (Source: BoingBoing)