Phrases that could soon be history?
Last week, Steve Rubel brought to my attention the Oxford University Press word of the year 2009: “unfriend”. Along with his announcement, Rubel expressed his thoughts around “media reforestation” and “common phrases that could soon be history”. Above are two examples by him (of the 10 he exposes), but the comments section to his post give some other good examples, like “dial the telephone”.
My first thought on this is language does change with habits and tools (I love Oxford University Press’ choice of the year) but the majority of current adult citizens still understand what a “broken record” is, or to what we refer when we talk about a “walking encyclopedia” when Wikipedia is probably the encyclopedia with the larger number of feet ever. A few years from now Rubel’s approach will be even more relevant because our yongest adults will flip at the fact that we had to hold several 2Kg encyclopedia volumes to look up for concepts that were “far away” in the alphabet.
The times, they are a-changin’.
![From the September 2009 edition of “Did You Know?”.
[Via labnol.org]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kq46hwq5Eb1qa3ktro1_500.jpg)
How long would it take to read the whole internet?
It would take 57,000 years according to these info-graphs which probably don’t include Twitter, Facebook status updates and private blogs. I mean, those would keep you occupied until the end of time.
