New Media Venacular is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Affiliation, affinity, multitasking, participatory, interactivity, semiotic,transparency,...

All of these are words are not new, but the meanings of them are now new. So I suppose that they are in fact "new words." What these words all have in common (besides being reissued words, fresh out of the box of cyberculture and smelling like plastic) is that I have had repeated encounters with them as I have studied the new medium of video games. All of these words are obviously not new and have been around for ... well, a long time I'm sure. But as media evolves so to does our language. The words that we use now to describe current forms of media will most likely be different than the words we will use in the future.

There are many words that are not even currently within our vocabulary or just have not been developed yet. Take for instance the piece "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush. Throughout that article Bush is describing in depth what sounds like our current computers and more specifically their ability to hyperlink, one of the tenents of the digital age. What Bush did not have was the vocabulary. The words we use today did not exist in 1945 when Bush was writing. In fact, Bush's vision is so far a head of its time that many of the words today didn't even exist fifteen years ago.

It has been difficult to find words that to describe the cognitive and social processes of video games. Much of the venacular surrounding media criticism is still being developed and no doubt there are many words that will develop before our society reaches digital adulthood.

With all that having been said though, it is an exciting time to be in media studies. And who knows, with wikiality poised like a 10 ton load of crap hangning over our societal heads, I might be able change the meanings of a few words. Or, I just might come up with a few words of my own, ... hmmm.