I confess, I did indeed invent the term “otakusphere” and now I am guilty of too-enthusiastically embracing a typo by Neal Stephenson. Witness: “reamde“. I’m sure we can come up with a clever implied meaning full of irony and wit for it.
So why not go meta and invent a term for the accumulated invented terms? a Geek Lexicon would therefore naturally be.. well, you know. I suppose we could also have “otaxicon” but now we are getting into failed Transformers territory. I also considered “gexicon” but I’m having flashbacks of Earthsea for some reason so let’s not go there.
Anyone else have any good candidates? I could also propose “geek service”.
Someone should probably snap the domain up.
There is ESR’s Jargon File (which features a Jargon Lexicon), but that focused more on computer programming than general geekdom. It is, in particular, lacking in pop-culture references (most of what’s there seems to be Monty Python related, etc…) Of course, it’s also relatively old, so that’s probably part of it. The semi-recent broadening of geekdom to include almost all walks of life might make such an effort more difficult though.
I like geexicon better than “geek service”, as the latter makes me think of pervy sexual stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
When I was in grade school, I had one teacher who would give us one term every day. He called it “cultural literacy” and it featured all sorts of stuff. Mostly old-school things, like latin phrases. Examples: “Et tu, Brute?”, “Caveat Emptor”, “Carpe Diem”, “Eureka”, “Nota Bene” and so on. I’ve always loved the concept though (and I have a half-formed idea for a series of blog posts on the subject). But perhaps it could be converted, as “Geek Literacy” or something.
yeah, thats basically the ideal we might want to try to model. I should create a page here. Of course, a lot of the anime lexicon is already well documented elsewhere, but I want something more generally geek focused, less anime.
Forgot the link to the Jargon File:
http://www.catb.org/jargon/
I agree about Anime. One of the reasons I think the Jargon file is so successful is that it has a pretty well defined purpose and background. It’s not just a list of terms and definitions – it features a lengthy introductory section that describes, in detail, what subcultures are being studied (hackers) and what distinguishes them from other subcultures. I think one big challenge of a “geexicon” would be to find an appropriate definition of geek, and to define the scope of what is covered in the document (i.e. is it primarily based on popular culture? And so on…) It would be very easy to pick a scope that is too broad (thus we end up with an Urban Dictionary type thing) or too narrow (and thus we only cover a small swath of geekdom).