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The Lingo That’ll Save Your Next Cocktail Party, From ‘Rovables’ to ‘Manthreading’

One of the rewards of inventing something new is that you get to name it. The name doesn’t always stick; with familiarity, “horse­less carriages” tend to become “automo­biles” and finally mere “cars.” But the original coinage is a snapshot of how we saw the world in that moment, flush with delight in new possibi­lities. Imagine: moving pictures! personal computers! smart phones! (Will “self-driving cars” seem equally redundant someday?)

Given a chance to add to the lexicon, even the most sober scientists can be gleefully silly: Think of all those quarks, squarks, muons, and gluons in particle physics. One of the most poetic neologisms of 2016, included in our year-end round-up of the best new words, was “dark sunshine”: photons generated by dark matter in stars—a sort of light that doesn't illuminate.

Jonathon Keats—author, artist, experimental philosopher—has been curating such wonders in the pages of WIRED (what folks used to call a “magazine”) since 2005. His popular Jargon Watch column has never appeared in full online, but that’s about to change. To catch you up on recent installments, we've gathered here some of the brave new words he's collected so far in 2017.

New ideas require new terminology. So if you want to know where change is happening, keep an eye on the lingo. Follow Jargon Watch and you’ll never run out of astonishing things to say at cocktail parties. And who knows? You just might get in on the ground floor when the next horseless carriage rolls along.

Asgardia
The first nation-state in space. Named for Asgard, home of the Norse gods, it will initially be located on a satellite to be launched this fall, at which time the founder plans to seek UN recognition. More than half a million Earthlings have already registered as citizens.

cellular PC
A mobile device that can run standard desktop software. Micro­soft coined the term to tout a cell-connected gadget expected later this year. The endgame may be a smartphone running full-on versions of Office and Photo­shop. Pair it with a display and kiss your desktop PC goodbye.

g-putty
Silly Putty spiked with graphene flakes. It conducts electricity, and the electrical flow is so sensitive to deformation, it can be used to detect a spider’s footsteps. (Or, more pragmatically, to make wearable, always-on blood pressure sensors that don’t require a constrictive armband.)

groupalization
Yahoo’s idea for transferring online ad personalization to meat­space. Billboards and signs outfitted with cameras, mics, and scanners would profile passing groups of pedestrians or motorists—inferring demographics from car models, say—to serve up targeted ads.

manthreading
A pejorative term for tweetstorming—the oft-maligned Twitter practice of developing an argument across multiple sequential tweets. Some claim it amounts to digital “manspreading.”

molecular lasso
A rope-like protein used by Strep bacteria to grab onto heart cells once they invade a victim’s bloodstream—with dire results. It was found by using an x-ray microscope joined to a giant particle accelerator. The hope now is to develop an anti-adhesive agent that can head ’em off at the pass.

Paperfuge
A hand-operated centrifuge made of paper and string. Inspired by an ancient toy called a whirligig, the 20-cent device can spin blood samples fast enough to diagnose malaria in villages with no electricity. The Stanford lab that came up with it, led by Manu Prakash, previously invented a $1 paper microscope.

PhaaS
Phishing as a service. Based on software-as-a-service (SaaS) business models, these packages, sold on the dark web, provide everything a newbie cyber­criminal needs to run a phishing con, including templates for scams, fake web pages, and access to servers. One even offers tech support and tutorials.

rovables
Tiny robots that live on your clothing. A swarm could pose as jewelry or hide in a pocket, then deploy to check your vitals, remove cat hair, or take a microphone up to your collar when you get a phone call.

vertical walking
Scooting from floor to floor in a building with a new arm-and-leg-powered lift. It may look a little funny (picture someone shimmying up a utility pole, without the pole), but it uses no electricity, takes up minimal space, and expends significantly less energy than climbing stairs. Just don't tell your Fitbit.


Jonathan Keats (@jonathonkeats) is the author of five books, including Virtual Words: Language on the Edge of Science and Technology and You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future, both from Oxford University Press.

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