Wednesday, July 22, 2009

the blogosphere is yesterday's news

The term "blogosphere" has run its course. Aside from the fact that using it in mixed company feels a little like saying "information superhighway" or capitalizing the word "internet," it turns out the word was coined as a joke. (See its apparent first appearance here; see Wikipedia's explanation of the term's origin here.

Then there's the fact that we're slowly but surely moving away from using metaphors from our physical world to describe the features of the internet. We don't call it an information superhighway anymore because the metaphor--and its imagery--began to fail us. Calling it the "world wide web" works out okay, kind of, but we're increasingly dropping the www even when we share links with each other in the "real" physical world. ("Go to nytimes.com," I say, meaning www.nytimes.com. And when you type in nytimes.com, the internet just goes ahead and adds in the www for you.)

For real, you guys, it's time for a new word. I offered up blorizon, blorld, and blandscape; but these still link to the weird phenomenon of smashing blog together with a worldly metaphor.

My Twiend Mark Notess offered up these: Blatherworld. Bloviationspace.

So far, bloviationspace tops my list for its clever leveraging of our wordsmashing tendencies for a gentle swipe at all this weird neologistic nonsense.

Any ideas or suggestions?

1 comment:

Laura said...

I'm not sure it needs a name. When we use the word 'blog,' then isn't 'in the blogosphere' sort of implied?

 

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