A Joy of Tech webcomic about a currently topical matter, going off to college:
A frequent theme in these days of cellphones: you can stay in touch with someone all the goddam time.
Archive for the ‘These modern times’ Category
Off to school
September 1, 2013frape
August 31, 2013Steven Levine writes me about coming across the portmanteau frape on a recent visit to Ireland, heard from young Irish acquaintances:
It refers to somebody getting hold of your Facebook access (I’m assuming because they all log in from their phones so this is easy enough for a friend to do, if you leave your phone sitting on a table or somethiing) and posting as you. (A fake post is a “frape”, and somebody might have a status saying “fraped again”.) It stands for “Facebook rape”.
At first, Steven didn’t know whether the usage was specifically Irish or specifically youth-speak (or both), but he’s since discovered that it’s widespread. There’s even a snarky e-card:
Google on {“frape” “Facebook”} and look at the images — many many screenshots of frapes.
Means of communication
August 23, 2013An xkcd on a theme that comes up in other strips (especially Zits):
When all else fails, send a pigeon.
(Hat tip to Fatemah Abdollahi.)
The decline of the book
May 10, 2013… in the age of resources on the web. Today’s Zits:
Well, there have been Cliff’s Notes around for some time — but they are books, with pages. Just not many pages.
Autocorrect rules
May 6, 2013Today’s Rhymes With Orange:
Here’s a particularly silly version of autocorrect — or possibly automatic completion software — one that replaces frequent words (party, jacket) by infrequent ones (partake, jackal), indeed infrequent words that don’t fit the context (partake is a verb, while the context calls for a noun; and suit jacket is a common collocation, while suit jackal is absurd).
More on modern communications
April 22, 2013Today’s Zits:
The latest in a series of strips depicting young people as rejecting the telephone and face-to-face interaction in favor of modern communications technology.
As a bonus, though this isn’t hot news, there’s the verbing of the noun Facebook. Plenty of examples around, for instance this one:
Honoring those who Facebooked themselves out of their jobs
The Facebook Fired blog is a painfully modern collection of stories memorializing those who are collecting unemployment thanks to posts on Facebook or similar public disclosures. (link)
Ups and downs
April 10, 2013An xkcd, passed along on Facebook by Jack Hamilton:
I struggle to determine if this is actually self-referential, but then my head hurts.
Texting while talking
March 18, 2013Today’s Zits returns to the topic of texting and changes in the way people, or at least young people, communicate these days:
Sarah is on the cutting edge here, racing ahead of even Jeremy, who’s no slouch at cultural change.
Bob & Edith’s
January 10, 2013Today’s Zippy is about newspapers, their decline, and Griffy’s prediction that they’re about to come back into fashion, as a retro thing. The title — “Valiant Prints” — is a play on the name of the comic strip Prince Valiant (with the words inverted, plus the prince/prints pun). But then there’s another diner, in Bill Griffith’s endless series of them:
What is this postcard of which you speak
December 8, 2012In Zitsland, Jeremy has been sorting through the incoming mail. Not long ago, his mother discovered that he had thrown a postcard from his Aunt Joan into the junk mail box, believing that it wasn’t real mail. Jeremy’s mother remonstrates:
Jeremy simply rejects the idea of postcards, as an outmoded system of communications — deservedly outmoded, because it is unacceptably insecure.