Netymology: From Apps to Zombies: A Linguistic Celebration of the Digital World

Composed of 100 bite-sized entries of 400 to 600 words each, Netymology weaves together stories, etymologies and analyses around digital culture’s transformation and vocabulary. Chatfield presents a kaleidoscopic, thought-provoking tour through the buried roots of the symbols, speech, and mannerisms we have inherited from the digital age: from the @ and Apple symbols, to HTML and Trojan horses, to the twisted histories of new forms of slang, memes, text messages and gaming terms; how language itself is being shaped by technology, how it is changing us.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Selfie Consciousness
Chapter 2. #WhyDoWeDoThis?
Chapter 3. Transistor (Not Iotatron)
Chapter 4. Emoji and Emoticons
Chapter 5. Computers
Chapter 6. Signs of Our Times: @ and ⌘
Chapter 7. Marking Up
Chapter 8. Myths and Monsters
Chapter 9. Speak, Memory
Chapter 10. Why Wiki?
Chapter 11. Buffed-Up Gamers
Chapter 12. Very, Very Big and Very, Very Small
Chapter 13. The Names of Domains
Chapter 14. Rise of the Robots
Chapter 15. Cyber-Everything
Chapter 16. Three-Letter Words
Chapter 17. Everyone’s an Avatar
Chapter 18. On Memes
Chapter 19. Hacking Through the Net
Chapter 20. Do You Grok It?
Chapter 21. Sock Puppets and Astroturf
Chapter 22. Bluetooth
Chapter 23. The Cupertino Effect
Chapter 24. The Scunthorpe Problem
Chapter 25. The Coming of the Geeks
Chapter 26. Beware of the Troll
Chapter 27. Bitten by Bugs
Chapter 28. Bits, Bytes and Other Delights
Chapter 29. Twinks, Twinked, and Twinking
Chapter 30. Talking Less About Trees
Chapter 31. ZOMGs, LOLZ
Chapter 32. Lifehacking
Chapter 33. The Multitasking Illusion
Chapter 34. The Streisand Effect
Chapter 35. Acute Cyberchondria
Chapter 36. Casting the Media Net
Chapter 37. Bionic Beings and Better
Chapter 38. Technological Singularities
Chapter 39. Google and Very Big Numbers
Chapter 40. Status Anxiety
Chapter 41. The Zombie Computing Apocalypse
Chapter 42. To Pwn and Be Pwned
Chapter 43. Learning to Speak l33t
Chapter 44. Getting Cyber-Sexy
Chapter 45. Slacktivism and the Pajamahadeen
Chapter 46. Gamification and the Art of Persuasion
Chapter 47. Sousveillance
Chapter 48. Phishing, Phreaking and Phriends
Chapter 49. Spamming for Victory
Chapter 50. Gurus and Evangelists
Chapter 51. CamelCase
Chapter 52. The Blogosphere and Twitterverse
Chapter 53. Phat Loot and In-Game Grinding
Chapter 54. Meta-
Chapter 55. TL;DR
Chapter 56. Apps
Chapter 57. Fanboys and Girls
Chapter 58. Welcome to the Guild
Chapter 59. Facepalms and *Acting Out*
Chapter 60. Finding Work as a Mechanical Turk
Chapter 61. Geocaching
Chapter 62. The Beasts of Baidu
Chapter 63. Snowclones
Chapter 64. Typosquatting
Chapter 65. Egosurfing and Googlegangers
Chapter 66. Infovores, Digerati and Hikikomori
Chapter 67. Planking, Owling and Horsemanning
Chapter 68. Unfriend, Unfavorite (and Friends)
Chapter 69. Sneakernets and Meatspace
Chapter 70. Going Viral
Chapter 71. Dyson Spheres and Digital Dreams
Chapter 72. Welcome to Teh Interwebs
Chapter 73. On Good Authority
Chapter 74. A World of Hardware
Chapter 75. Darknets, Mysterious Onions, and Bitcoins
Chapter 76. Nets, Webs and Capital Letters
Chapter 77. Praying to Isidore and Tweeting the Pope
Chapter 78. QWERTY and Dvorak
Chapter 79. Apples Are the Only Fruit
Chapter 80. Eponymous Branding
Chapter 81. Mice, Mouses and Grafacons
Chapter 82. Meh
Chapter 83. Learn Olbanian!
Chapter 84. Booting and Rebooting
Chapter 85. Cookie Monsters
Chapter 86. Going Digitally Native
Chapter 87. Netiquette and Netizens
Chapter 88. The Names of the Games
Chapter 89. Flash Crowds, Mobs, and the Slashdot Effect
Chapter 90. Godwin’s Law
Chapter 91. From Beta to Alpha to Golden Master
Chapter 92. Mothers and Daughters, Masters and Slaves
Chapter 93. Bit Rot
Chapter 94. Nonprinting Characters
Chapter 95. Wise Web Wizards
Chapter 96. Disk Drives
Chapter 97. Easter Eggs
Chapter 98. Why Digital?
Chapter 99. Filing Away Our Data
Chapter 100. Artificial Intelligence and Turing Tests