Technobabble

The computer revolution, like many of the technologies that preceded, is producing an abundance of new terms and catchphrases that are making their way into the English language.

In this lively account, computerese expert John A. Barry chronicles an important linguistic development which he has termed "technobabble": the pervasive and indiscriminate use of computer terminology, especially as it is applied to situations that have nothing at all to do with technology. "Technobabble examines the new computer lexicon from an etymological, historical, and anecdotal perspective.

It reveals technobabble's origins among the "high priests" of the advanced research laboratories of the 1950s, describing the folkways by which this sublanguage becomes incorporated into the vocabulary of the larger society, and predicting some of the new dimensions technobabble is likely to assume in coming years.

Barry details the technobabble style, which is characterized by logorrhea, excessive use of the passive voice, anthropomorphism, vague and abstract language, euphemism, obfuscation, solecism, synecdoche, and mangled metaphors. And he delves into technobabble's sexual, pharmacological, political, religious, and other connotations.

Perhaps one of the most troubling implications of this new style of communicating, Barry points out, is that technobabble tends to apply a mechanistic lexicon to human interaction, while describing computer processes in human terms.

These days, for example, many people do not merely converse with one another; they "interface. (Computers, on the other hand, are said to "talk to" each other.) It is not uncommon to hear people refer to their leisure hours as "downtime.

In California'sSilicon Valley (the wellspring of much of the technobabble lexicon), getting something off one's chest is also known as "core-dumping.

Conversely, computers are described as "thinking" and "remembering, " and computer programs are commonly given the pronoun "he." John A.

Barry is the coauthor of nine books, including the best-seller "Sunburst: The Ascent of Sun Microsystems.

He is editor-in-chief of "SunWorld magazine for which he writes "lex, " a computer language column.