Virtual Words

Does any field of endeavor contribute more new words to our language than science and technology? Politics, music, and literature combined run a distant second. Why and how does this sphere of human activity generate so many neologisms and new constructions of old terms? The man in charge of Wired magazine's "Jargon Watch" provides the answers.

May 25: On this day in 1938 Raymond Carver was born. Carver's poem "Luck," about a nine-year-old who wakes to an empty house and the leftovers of his parents' party, is all too autobiographical: "What luck, I thought. / Years later,…

Angry robots! Aren't they all? Well, not the line of fine science fiction and fantasy books that comes to readers under the rubric Angry Robot. In fact, their offerings…

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