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Novan Slang

Slang words used at various periods in Novan history


Adlapse Information disease caused by the sudden breakdown of memetic defences. Under the onslaught of advertising and compelling media some people overnight become extremely suggestible, essentially turning off all critical thinking and just following the suggestions of media around them. The treatment involves a lengthy rest period with very limited bandwidth access, and therapy to establish a new memetic defence.

Ally People from the Free Ceti Alliance on Nova Terra (Tau Ceti).

Asimov An AI with severe constraints on its thinking or actions.

Brand One's personal image.

Brand awareness development Becoming more well known and respected. "So, how is your brand awareness development going?"

Bucketed AI expression for being erased.

Chronovore Negative Federation era term for very old people who refused to die or freeze themselves, and instead clung on to life at ever increasing costs.

Cliffhanger mind Someone addicted to being the centre of attention.

Codewalker A person, AI or program that traverses code for a living. Not the most glamorous job, but very necessary to fix glitches, old bugs, find out how to upgrade legacy systems, etc.

Companion Robot partner.

Cybrarian A digital librarian, especially one hunting down truly obscure references.

Eternals The rare people, institutions and styles that never go out of style.

Exoself All the software and external functionality supporting a person. Includes personal AI, software filters, secretaries and infrastructure.

Fa´ Fabulous, fantastic, but a tiny bit of faddish. Denotes something that is great right now, but has no staying power.

Fadbuster Someone who not just dislikes a fad but strikes out militantly against it.

Fact Totem A portable interface to the Knowledge Net.

Fallen Derogatory Alliance term for someone from the continent of Landfall.

Frame One's surroundings: habits, styles, clothing, image, rumours etc.

Fully A production for fullsense immersion.

Go Tani Variant of Go often found in Nova casinos.

Go to the Alliance Humorous expression for hiding from mistakes, media overexposure or bad press ("After that show, you better go to the Alliance").

Hal Derogatory term for AI.

High C To break under stress; refers to the stories about opera singers breaking glass with their voices. "You better take a vacation or you will reach High C".

Hedgehog Militantly isolationist communities in the Alliance.

Herostratians People willing to do extremely stupid or destructive things to get attention.

Hope Springs Eternal The national anthem of the entire colony, a slogan used for the people who want to unify the Alliance with Landfall.

Hu Human. Used as a conjunct to AI, sometimes written in lowercase ("We must stand together, both hu and ai.")

Hypzoid A "one shot wonder", a huge star that is likely to vanish just as quickly as he/she/it appeared.

Hyper Hypermedia, fully immersive or intelligent documents.

Iders Non-intelligent net agents. such as:
  • spiders, connects information,
  • striders, searches for information,
  • hiders, hides in a system and watches it or
  • riders, hides in data to sneak into somebody's system.

Jonah A Nova inhabitant. Oldfashioned term used by the initial colonists, since Nova lies in the Cetus (whale) constellation.

LCA! Lights, camera, action. Novamedia expression for "Wow! Something is happening! Better film this!".

Life on the shelf AI expression for being ignored or inactive.

Memius Somebody skilled in crafting catchy memes.

Meta To look at something from a higher level, to "jump out of the system".

Meeling AI problem where the program begins to loop its self-awareness so that it is aware that it is aware that is aware and so on; a problem in the first self-aware AIs but fixable using self-interrupts; however the word has remained for other consciousness-instabilities in AI and as a term for being self-obsessed among humans.

Müesli Derogatory term for someone from the Alliance.

Multi Multimedia, the most common kind of document with combined text, video, sound, interaction and responsiveness. "I have nothing to do!" "Try piping a multi, dear".

Omphalos "Navel of the world"; AI expression for an important net node or knowledge node.

Pipe To ingest information.

Nome An avid AI Nomic player.

Nomic Abstract game where the rules are changed by the players according to meta-rules; originally invented as a metaphor for how a constitution works. Popular among AI.

Sched Ones schedule, the all important list of appointment and to-dos every civilized person owns. It is often managed by a "Schedder", a specialist AI. Schedcrashing is the act of trying to get into another's schedule, with force or not.

Sellrat A piece of software following one around trying to sell something.

Soap Ongoing interactive game/broadcast. From the ancient soap operas. The Parliament is sometimes called The Soap.

Synthespian Artificial actors, usually AI controlled.

Technogamous Married or emotionally connected with robots or AIs.

Tentacle A covert identity on the net, appearing to be a legitimate person but intended for nefarious or deceptive purposes. A single person can have many tentacles, appearing as a group of people.

Wipeout A significant network crash.

Unit Unity member.


 
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Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg
Initially published on 08 March 2010.

 
 
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