Glossary


Blamestorming: group debate about why something failed

Bozocentrism: humanility when it does not lead to tragic results

Bricollage: an assemblage of unexpected parts and pieces

Defenestration Point: that moment of utter despair on which one feels like throwing a technode out the window

Disinstruction: instructions that make it impossible to put something together

Drownloading: overwhelming information from too much time on the Web

Emailstrom: the common blizzard of emails

Emergence: new systems emerging from the old ones

Evilution: the constantly changing and adapting face of evil in the Gizmos

Frag & Frac: interactive structures as both fragmented (in need of coherence) and fractal (complex)

Futurecasting: the vain attempt to predict what the world will look like the day after tomorrow

Gizmos: the co-evolving system of humans and machines

Golemic: the feeling of helplessness when we try – and inevitably fail – to impose our will on machines

Humanility: the understanding that we are not the center of the universe

Irritainment: pervasively annoying, yet still vaguely amusing, media

Lineasts: people who work sequentially, one thing at a time and prefer linear modes of information

Lipshitzean: the necessary attitude that technology is good and bad at the same time

Menchine: the techuman animal who has not forgotten how to be human

Misguidance: the inability to explain technical things clearly
MOIO Factor: the idea that machines can think for themselves, rarely to our benefit

Mouse Potato: online generation’s version of a couch potato, a digital oaf

Nanostalgia: nostalgia for things that happened a few media moments ago

Neoluds: modern Luddites who are opposed to technology not on political grounds but because of unfamiliarity

Ohnosecond: the irreversible instant in which you realize that you screwed up

Optophiles: people who like choices, pathways through which they can navigate on their own terms

Parabox: any piece of technology that does not work and therefore accomplishes the opposite of what it was meant to do

Perfluxity: a persistent feeling of confusion and disorientation resulting from constant changes in the Gizmos

Practology: the design of things that actually work according to human needs

Principle of Underlap: the co-existence of opposing technologies beyond the point of practicality

Principle of ReVision: the fact that everything is constantly being revised and remade

Profusia: paralysis of decision due to too many choices

Rule of Higgeldy-Piggeldy: the understanding that because we are not in control, futurecasting is doomed to fail

Rule of Uncertain Displacement: inability to predict which technologies will replace other ones and which will last

Synergence: the coming together of previously unmixed systems to unexpected effect

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