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If you’re an outsider to the IT industry, does our jargon confuse you? Are we, so to say, speaking in another language? A few years back, I found a little book at a second hand book shop, called Jargon Watch, by Gareth Branwyn.

I remember paging through this pocketbook and smiling to myself as I read the entries, sometimes laughing, sometimes shaking my head. Here was a perfect example of technology taking the English language and redifining it, providing those of us in the industry with so many new ways to describe our world.

Below are some entries I found most appropriate:

• Alpha Geek – The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group. “Ask Larry, he’s the alpha geek around here.”
• Appeasement Engineer – The field service engineer whose job is to arrive at your site within the guarenteed response time, make sure the machine is plugged in, and then call the home office for further instructions.
• Beepilepsy – The brief seizure people sometimes have when their beeper (or cellphone) goes off (especially in vibrator mode). Characterised by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and interuption of speech in mid-sentence.
• Bio-break – Techie euphemism for having to use the toilet.
• Bit Diddling – The act of manipulating bits with little to show for it. “The artist bit diddled the image for hours, but I can’t see much of an improvement.”
• Bitslag – All the useless rubble one must plow through on the Net to get to the rich information ore.
• Blowing your buffer – Losing one’s train of thought. Occurs when the person you’re speaking with won’t let you get a word in edgewise, and/or has just said something so astonishing that your train gets derailed. “Damn, I just blew my buffer!”
• Byte-bonding – Occurs when computer users get together and discuss things that non-computer users don’t understand. When byte-bonded people start playing on a computer during a noncomputer-related social situation, they are “geeking out.”
• CLM or Career Limiting Move – Used to describe an ill-advised activity. Sending one’s boss a memo on recycled paper, the reverse of which contains a rant against him/her, is a serious CLM (a real life example, btw!)
• CEOP-phobia – The male fear of peeing while standing next to one’s CEO at a urinal.
• Client/Server Action – Geek euphamism for getting laid. “I went to the Oracle party the other night hoping for a little client/server action.”
• Cube Farm – An office filled with cubicles.
• Cybrarian – A digital librarian. One who makes his/her living doing online research and information retrieval.
• Dead Tree Edition – The paper version of a publication available in both paper and electronic forms, as in “the dead tree edition of the San Francisco Chronicle…” Also known as Treeware.

More to follow when I have some more time to type them up.