"Cubicle Farm" Technobabble

[Gareth Branwyn]

It is especially annoying when the list shows up, without attribution, in
print publications. It's been in the Washington Post three(!) times, The
Economist, the Microsoft newsletter and dailies too numerous to mention.

The truly amazing thing is that these print pubs, which spent a lot of
column inches questioning the voracity of online media, don't bother to do a
simple Web search on these words to discover they are all from my Jargon
Watch column. With the exception of one instance with the Post, none of them
have printed my letters pointing up that they published my work without
attribution.

The good news is, I've added The Washington Post and The Economist to my
resume (since my work has appeared in both).

I've also been keeping a list of all of the titles given to this email
message. It's fascinating to see what people choose to name it:

Silicon Valley Geekspeak
Gen-x Office Lingo
Silicon Valley Office Lingo
Internet Slang
Dilbert Slang

(my complete list is on my other computer)


"Cubicle Farm Technobabble" is a new one on me.

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul McFedries <lists at mcfedries.com>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Date: Friday, March 31, 2000 7:37 AM
Subject: Re: "Cubicle Farm" Technobabble


>> Source: Oracle Humor, a WebSearch.About.com
>> Netlink. http://websearch.about.com/msub35.htm)
>
>Actually, the true "source" for all these words is Gareth Branwyn's Jargon
>Watch column/book. Every last one of the words was Jargon Watched and the
>definitions are word-for-word.
>
>Gareth, you must get mighty tired of seeing your work ripped off like this.
>Or is it now a form of imitationish flattery?
>
>Paul
>
>Home: http://www.mcfedries.com/
>Books: http://www.mcfedries.com/books/
>Word Spy: http://www.wordspy.com/
>