The Computer Contradictionary

"Ascertain the meaning before consulting this dictionary," warns the author of this collection of deliberately satirical misdefinitions. New computer cultures and their jargons have burgeoned since this book's progenitor, The Devil's D.P. Dictionary, was published in 1981. This updated version of Stan Kelly-Bootle's romp through the data processing "laxicon" is a response to the "Unix pandemic" that has swept academia and government, to the endlessly hyped panaceas offered to the MIS, and to the P.C. explosion that has brought computer terminology to a "hugely bewildered, lay audience." The original dictionary, an urbane and witty pastiche of Ambrose Bierce's famous work, parried chiefly the mainframe and mini-folklore of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. This long-awaited revision adds over 550 new entries and enhances many of the original definitions. Key targets are "a host of new follies crying out for cynical lexicography [including] the G.U.I.-Phooey iconoclasts, object orienteering, and the piping of Blobs down the Clinton-Gore InfoPike." ack n. [Origin: back-formed negation of nak.] A signal indicating that the error-detection circuits have failed. computer science n. [Origin: possibly Prof. P. B. Fellgett's rhetorical question, "Is computer science? "] A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter. multimedia n. An application attacking all five senses of the user--sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch-but especially, smell.

Stan Kelly-Bootle has been involved in most areas of academic and commercial computing since his EDSAC I days at Cambridge in the early 1950s. He is the author of nine books and is contributing editor for OS/2 Magazine. His monthly "Devil's Advocate" column has been running in UNIX Review since 1984.