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E-jargon
by Isaac Szymanczyk

What is it with all of the acronyms? Is it because we just say everything too much, and we get tired of mouthing out all of the words every single time? Or is it that, in this age where the time we save with all of our tech devices doubles every 18 months, we just wouldn’t have enough time to get everything done if we didn’t abbreviate? People didn’t worry about how long it used to take to say something in the old days. Think about it. It’s been said by scholars that the sophistication of a language can be measured by how much can be said in the smallest space possible. Boy, have we come a long way. "Hi QT. I C U. -U & I go 4 R&R @ 5? BTW, what’s your 411?"

Business cards don’t even have time for words anymore. You can actually tell how cool a company is these days by how short its field labels are. Old companies label the information on their business cards with "Phone," "Fax," "Voice Mail," "E-Mail," and "Web Site"; new ones with "p," "f," "v," "e,". (BTW, when was the last time you actually saw the entire word "Telephone" printed out?) The coolest business cards don’t even print labels; they just print the data and figure you can tell which one’s which. (Hint: first is the phone, second is the fax, and the one with the "@" symbol is the email address.) It’s actually more important to get the spelling right of the email name than the person’s real name (after all, are you really ever going to need to SPEAK to them face to face? Somehow, in the last couple of years, people just sort of quit putting the hyphen into the word "e-mail" and the http://www into URLs. That’s just so ’90s. Now it’s "email," or if you’re really cool, "vmail (with text messaging service)," for those with web enabled phones.

New words, too, proliferate in the "e-conomy," whatever THAT means. In the high tech sector especially, it seems that what we produce most is new words. "Download" is not so much used to acquire files, but to brief someone else on a meeting or other information. An "incubator" isn’t for premature babies, but for startup e-companies nursed by VC groups. "Facetime," for those semi-quarterly meetings where you actually shake hands with all of the partners you deal with online every day.

But the best instance of our society’s insatiable desire for new words is in the proliferation of prefixes: i, e, v, o, etc. Six years ago, when email was still somewhat "hot," everything became "e" words. Ecommerce, eBusiness, eBay, eToys. Then Imac came out, and instantly, iPlanet, iVision, iSore, and iDontCareAnymore appeared. Now, the word (or the letter) on the street is that it’s anyone’s best guess. "dBusiness," "oPhoto," "k-Swiss,"…wait, I think they had that already. But you turn the corner, and it’s e-this and I-that and web-stuff and b-junk.

And the "B2" craze is the best of all. "Business to business," okay, yeah, I get it. That’s hard to say over and over. Keeping up with the variations, however, can wear you out. "B2C" for "-to consumers," "B2E" for "-to employees," "B2G" for "-to government," "B2Me" as the focus for all the companies bent on creating the ultimate individualized online shopping/living/entertainment/business experience. B2Me is going to be the next huge trend, for those quiet times when you just want to "unplug" and curl up in front of the fire with your Bluetooth-enabled I-book and enjoy a good e-novel. Before you know it, you’ll be sitting in your vTec e-Car (environmentally enabled), balancing your eStarbucks in one hand while listening to your vmail on your in-dash WAN GPS i-stereo that delivers your MP3s, eTrade quotes and dBusiness updates, and you’ll look up at the EV humming in front of you and spill your coffee down the front of your FUBU shirt into your B-cup as its bumper stickers ask you "WWBJD" (What would BJesus Do?) and "Got B2BJESUS?"

Wow. Would Christ refer to himself as "I-Jesus" in the digital age? What would John Lennon have said to all of this? Let it Be2B? No doubt fashion has kept up. Guess what Calvin Klein’s new scent is this fall? B2be.

It’s a new age. It’s a new English, baby. The v-words (virtual words) for a virtual world are here, and they’re spawning new ones. Live ’em, learn ’em, love ’em . Or B2Bewildered.