The English language, as bastardized a creation as it is, heavily relies on decscriptors that are drawn from endless languages, local dialects, colloquialisms and sometimes pure invention. Going through language as children, we are beseiged by the basic prefix "list": anti, de, dis, ex, in, mis, pre, re, and un. As we move to secondary and post-secondary education we are ultra-mega-inundated with superlative prefixes like... ultra and mega, contra, hemi, hyper, infra, inter, peri, semi, syn, trans. When we slide our minds into the realms of "intelligensia" we enjoy dropping pseudo and quasi before every idea so that we don't actually have to cop to anything concrete. In most cases our prefixes meshed well with the root words we were using, and, in some instances, to the point where the prefixed word became more common to regular use than the root word itself.
Then technology, as it usually does, took things in strange direction. At first the invasion was subtle, yet foreshadowed insidious fallout. Our reality became "virtual" and so did, apparently, everything around us. Not officially a prefix, yet pretty much used as one, the descriptor was often used, not to elucidate meaning, but to sound cool. So in a virtual reality we gathered in our virtual teams and vitually communicated in our virtual world operating our virtual machines. It wasn't enough that, years earlier, dish detergent had made our dishes "virtually spotless". Now "virtually spotless" indicated a tech-savvy dog catcher.Virtually months later, or let's call it the 1980s, William Gibson took a prefix that was only regularly used on one word, and started a trend that would force "virtual" to give way to "cyber". And much like the language meme that strangled us previously our cyberspace filled with cyberhomes occupied by cyberpunks having cybersex and cyberhating each other the next morning. And things were going swimmingly, at least cyberswimmingly, until we decided that virtual's three syllables was WAY too much and cyber's two syllables was STILL too much. Something had to be done.No one thought much about it when CompuServe first used "Email" from 1981 to 1984. Those in the know probably thought, "Yeah. Okay. Mail. Electronically. I get it." We all would soon get it as we sent out billions of e-mails with e-cards so we could be e-tailing and e-marketing our new Ebay e-business and be part of the e-commerce revolution... sorry e-volution. As a prefix I got the distinction between mail (soon to become snail mail) and e-mail. At least in this instance the "e" indicated a new face that people needed to know if they were going to communicate. Basically, e-mail wasn't the same as mail and the lazy prefix worked just fine. As for the rest, couldn't we just have said marketing, business, and commerce and understand it included everything our companies did? And e-tailing was just plain wrong. My e-health was suffering.On October 23, 2001, Steve Jobs became the new William Gibson of prefixes when Apple released the iPod. Not only had we reduced the prefix down to a single syllable, now, unlike the tenuous grasp "e" had to electronic, "i" pretty much meant nothing other an even more innocuous reference to a personal pronoun that added nothing to attached noun... nothing except being cool! Apple would iSell the iPod, iMac, and iBook in an iStore or iTunes until everyone was iTouching themselves. We now iPlay and iEarn in our iVillages and are iSafe with iTools because we have to go watch our favorite iStar in an iFilm which we find out with iNewswire on iGoogle.I'm guessing the only logical conclusion is to move onto to other vowels with even less meaning than "e" or "i"". Of course "a" doesn't work too well because it is already a prefix that means without; e-marketers wouldn't like that. "U" has already been scooped because of its personal pronoun association... marketers really love personal pronouns; what's next something stupid like the "we"? Wait a second.... I suppose we could just move on to consonants. Maybe we can cash in on nostalgic ties to Q-bert, X and Y Generations. I'm putting my money on the "B". Think about it. In a society where everyone wants to be told what's cool, we could have bMusic, bVideo, bGames, bCommerce, bPCs, bWorlds and bSex... maybe that's why all the bees are disappearing - they know something we don't.I think, in 25 years, techonology will enable us to prefix things with a shrug or a caustic eyebrow twitch and, until that day, iHate tech prefixes.
