Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

The war on language

The militarisation of daily language, particularly reportage post-2001, is escalating noticeably. Though the IT sector has had a lot of military-derived terms in common use for decades (eg; survivability), the use of specifically military terms in IT reportage is becoming extremely overt, as evidenced by CNET:

"Australia's music industry piracy investigations unit has raided an Internet service provider in Perth in what it says is the first Australian assault on the use of BitTorrent technology for copyright infringement."

BitTorrent, as reported in the same article, is a software application "that enables efficient software distribution and peer-to-peer sharing of very large files", though the clear impression from the language is that of targeting something like an insurgent force, for assault is a specifically aggressive term with particularly violent definition, as for instance is ambush. The likening of software usage to an object or state of affairs warranting the use of overwhelming force is characteristic of increasingly noticeable embedding of military terms in civil language, particularly towards a less than subtle manipulation of the reader's response to the reporting. Though assault occasions a criminal violence also, the primary usage is frequently similar to this example from Webster's:

"To make an assault upon, as by a sudden rush of armed men; to attack with unlawful or insulting physical violence or menaces."

Unless in the unlikely case the CNET writer was attempting to infer the legal stoush over BitTorrent is itself an "unlawful attack", the primary meaning is soundly in keeping with these times of war and authoritarian rule. Though this serves only as a modest example, there are plethora of others published every minute of every day; without some careful filtering, it's not likely to be even noticeable to any but the most careful information consumer until it is probably overwhelming - like an assault on any notions of opposing the politicised practice of what amounts to psychological warfare in everyday culture.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 3:07 pm ::