Novelty Items

Esperanto never really caught on as an international language. English won that honour, spawning various "Englishes" with widespread use and becoming the universal lingua franca, nowhere more so than on the Internet.  With this in mind, the new edition of the Oxford English Dictionary is rich with examples of cyberspeak and other colourful additions that express the mood of the times.
Cyberspeak isn't subtle. It says things as they really are. It knows few grammatical bounds. It's just as ephemeral as the virtual world from which it derives. Even the OED's editors admit that such words will remain in use only as long as the vogues and fads they describe and define endure. If you wish to be savvy, however, and know your jargon here's a hypothetical scenario: a barbecue. First, we meet the lookist screenager attired in carpenters, a shrug and Calvin Klein chuddies. Addicted to Frankenfood, keen to make a shedload of cash, he thinks that Girl Power is pants. Behind him languishes our hostess, the cyberwidow of a cybersquatting dot.com flexecutive. The affluenza enjoyed by our absent host sadly affords him no relief from the analysis paralysis and achiever fever he suffers. On the roof, we see the white van ladder gang busy doing nothing while the neighbours are sunbathing. Lastly, we meet the ego-surfing fashionista who makes a tardy entrance, seething with Web rage and suffering from embarrassing hat hair.
If the previous paragraph reads as gobbledegook, don't worry. By the time you've memorised this vocabulary, the words will, as likely as not, be outdated. Even if you succeed in remembering anything, your computer probably wouldn't recognise what you write. The same words that filter down so quickly from the cybersphere to our spoken language take an uncommonly long time to become written into computer programs. Even as I type this piece, red and green underscores flash on the screen, highlighting faults in the spelling and sense of my ultra-modern English.
But never fear. Microsoft may not take too long to update its spell-check program if Bill Gates's latest project is a success. Opposed to the "Britocentric" English dictionaries produced to date, Gates is offering an alternative. Under the auspices of his vast empire, a new World English Dictionary is to be published. Beware Microphobes; soon Gates may be controlling not only how you work, but even how you speak.
It would appear, though, that the computer has not quite yet achieved world domination. Despite the fact of the ultimate cybergeek's association with the project, despite the constant cry that traditional publishing is dead in this technological age, the publishers have decided to offer the dictionary in printed form as well as on CD-Rom.
Why? Because, they are forced to admit, it is quicker to delve into a printed book to find the exact meaning of "Microphobe" say, than it is to switch on the computer, wait for it to warm up, run the CD-Rom and then, minutes later, start your search.