Finding an identity 83
innetlag,netdead,netnews,hypernet,Usenet,Netspeak,EcoNet,
PeaceNet, and many other organizational names;hotinhotlist,
hotspot,hotlink,Hotmail,HotBot,HotJava, and other trade names;
andbug[‘software error’] inbug fix,bugtracker,bug bash[‘hunt
for bugs’],BugNet. Similar in function are the use ofcyber- and
hyper- as prefixes or combining forms (cyberspace,cyberculture,cy-
berlawyer,cybersex,cybersquatter,cyberian,cyber rights;hypertext,
hyperlink,hyperfiction,hyperzine) and the suffixal use of -bot[an
artificial intelligence program, fromrobot], as inannoybot,chat-
terbot,knowbot,cancelbot,softbot,mailbot,spybot. Other prefixes
includee- (influential in the language as a whole, p. 21);V- [‘vir-
tual’], as inV-chat; andE[for a number raised to a power, from
mathematics], as inThanksE6[‘Thanks a million’]. The wordat,
often shown as @ (p. 21), also has an increasingly prefixal function:
atcommand,atsign,@-party,@-address,@Home; this too has come
to be influential in non-Internet settings. And a productive future
may be in store for the suffi x-icon, as people derive words based
onemoticon– such asassicon. Blends (in which part of one word
is joined to part of another) are illustrated bynetiquette,netizen,
infonet,cybercide[‘thekillingofapersonainavirtualworldsgame’],
datagram,infobahn,Internaut,Bugzilla[‘a bug-tracking agency’].
An innovation is the replacement of a word-element by a similar
sounding item, as inecruiting[‘electronic recruiting’],ecruiter, and
etailing[‘electronicretailing’].Anotheristheretainingoftheperiod
found in electronic addresses within certain compounds, as a kind
of infix, seen innet.legend,net.abuse,net.police, andnet.citizen,or
sites beginning withalt. (with the punctuation mark often spoken
aloud as ‘dot’). As already noted (p. 20),dotis itself increasing
in frequency, as indot address,dot file,dotcom organizations.Re-
duced sentences and phrases may appear as words, as in thewhois
instruction (for looking up names in a remote database) and
whowhere(a means of finding a person’s e-address by entering
a name and location).
Other means of word-creation are also used, at least in the play-
ful jargon used by hackers. It is not clear just how widespread
or influential individual coinages are, but in aggregate they are