ROTFLOLing and memetics
Just a quick pointer to a blog I posted about language changes being decried by American linguists. Where we used to have words change flavor and meaning, such as “Gay” going from happy to queer (which used to mean odd), we now are integrating shocking, non-mellifluous acronyms like YMMV instead of the good old, red-blooded ones like scuba and radar.
Technology has been at the forefront of linguistic change since it’s emergence as a consumer tool. Our transition from the Information Age to the Knowledge Age continues this trend with words like data-mining, blogging and podcasting.
Our ability to transmute reality is the core motivator to the transformation of language and the universal adoption, across languages, of their defining lexicon.