These are new words or phrases that have caught my eye. My definition of a new word is one which is not in the Macquarie Dictionary online.
Some words seem to have more significance than others in terms of reflecting changes in the Australian culture, so I will give each word a Zeitgeist rating (ZG) within a range of 1-10.
If you disagree with the rating that I give, please argue your case in the comment field provided.
I would love you to contact me if you have made any new word discoveries of your own.
This is essentially advertising, usually digital advertising, which takes on the form and style of the platform that presents it so that it blends seamlessly with the basic content and is pretty well indistinguishable from it.
ZG: 3
A piece of industry jargon which even specialists in the field do not explain very well but something that could trip us all up.
Read MoreYou can find online support groups for people suffering from various illnesses. This has been of great benefit to the sufferers, but they now have to watch out for cuckoos in the nest, people who are perfectly well but fake their symptoms so as to garner support for themselves. If they are good online performers they can attract quite a following and that brings with it certain benefits.
ZG: 4
This one may gain in frequency as people become more wary.
Read MoreThis is the use of AI to create interactive digital versions of a person who has departed this life. A chatbot can bring the dead person to a virtual life as an avatar which can communicate with family and friends, using the dead person’s voice.
Read MoreSuddenly there are various people in the community who see their jobs being taken over by a chatbot, and among them are journalists. It seems that a number of people have taken to testing out ChatGPT, the latest piece of software in this area, and have found that it can churn out an article on what to do in Sydney or which are the best places for breakfast in Melbourne without any trouble at all.
Read MoreThis is what lies at the heart of the chatbot, a piece of software which uses auditory or textual prompts to mimic the responses of a human being, either by voice or text. The problem is that suddenly generative AI is much more successful than it has ever been before.
Read MoreSydney may be getting a drone light show at the end of this year instead of the traditional fireworks. The reason for this is the cost of fireworks and the amount of pollution they put in the air.
ZG: 4
This may have a surge in popularity come the next New Year’s Eve celebrations. Who knows what form they will take but exploding a lot of fireworks may not seem like a good idea.
Read MoreZoom is an app that facilitates online meetings, chats and group messaging. It was popular in the business and education world, but now that we are all living virtual lives, Zoom has become a popular app for any kind of virtual engagement with other people.
ZG: 6
While it is true that we are becoming much more familiar with ways of connecting online than we had ever thought possible, it is also true that, when this is over, we will want to meet in person more than ever.
Read MoreThis is a slow motion selfie taken on an Apple iphone 11 which features a front-facing selfie cam.
ZG: 3
Probably ephemeral. The word has been trademarked by Apple so whether it will escape into general use remains to be seen.
Read MoreThis is a mixture of woody hemp fibre from inside the hemp stalk combined with lime and water. The resulting mix is packed into a wooden frame and tamped down to make a wall.
ZG: 4
I don’t think hempcrete has reached the popularity that mud bricks had in the 1980s but who knows? It may take off.
Read MoreQuantum supremacy is achieved when a problem can be solved efficiently on a quantum computer but would take a staggeringly long time to solve on a classical computer.
ZG: 4
Only a small community of specialists and enthusiasts would know this term but for them it is a big deal.
Read MoreA card clash occurs when the reading device picks up one contactless credit or debit card as you tap on, and then a different card as you tap off.
ZG: 6
This caused a bit of a stir when the system was new but will probably fade from sight as we become more proficient in tapping on and tapping off.
Read More. Screen time is the time we spend in front of a device with a screen, such as a television, a computer, an ipad, a smartphone, or a video game console.
ZG: 9
This is coming up as an anxiety of the moment. We are increasingly polarised by our screen habits with one group becoming increasingly worried about it, and the other just doing what they do.
Read MoreThis is software which enables a business to falsify the details of a transaction maintained by the point-of-sale software in order to cheat on tax payments.
ZG: 4
The ATO also comments that Australians regard cheating on their tax as a national sport so this is technology jargon and the subject matter is of little interest.
Read MoreTrade is the buying and selling of goods and services. Digital trade is digitally-enabled, with the item of commerce being delivered digitally or physically. It is what happened to commerce when we got the internet.
ZG: 8
How we buy and sell things, after being such a fixed procedure for centuries, is now in a state of flux.
Read MoreApparently this is the latest way of pranking people.
ZG: 5
Let’s hope this practice is quickly stamped out so that the word fades into oblivion.
Read MoreFractional employment is an employment structure similar to freelancing but not limited to a particular project in the way that freelancing usually is.
ZG: 5
A jargon term used by HR people but one that may increase in frequency as work styles change.
Read MoreThe latest in the slowly growing set of words formed with the ending -veillance is dataveillance, the monitoring of digital data relating to someone’s activities online.
ZG: 5
A piece of jargon, perhaps, although since we are now all so involved with activities online, we perhaps will become more familiar with it.
Read MoreThe dictionary already has IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and Saas (software as a service). This term, MaaS, stands for mobility as a service.
ZG: 4
An important concept but one that is perhaps a too technical to have much currency.
Read MoreThe deep fake is insidious because computer technology now provides techniques for seamlessly inserting contrived audio or video into real audio or video, the final result being apparently completely authentic. I notice that mainstream news publishers are now people return to them as trustworthy sources.
ZG: 8
A world we cannot distinguish fact from fiction is extremely disturbing.
Read MoreWe want to ensure our privacy online while acknowledging that the big data obtained there can be very useful. Differential privacy is the system that keeps the privacy of the individual by introducing random noise into the data.
SG: 5
This is an important concept but it is not something that the average person will be discussing over the dinner table. It is a piece of techie jargon.
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