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THE COMPUTER CONTRADICTIONARY
Stan Kelly-Bootle. 1995. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [239 pages. $14.95 (softcover).]
With his title, Stan Kelly-Bootle acknowledges his debt to Georges Elgozy's Le contradictionnaire - ou L'esprit des mots, just as with his earlier The devil's DP dictionary (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1981) he paid homage to Ambrose Bierce and his 1911 collection, The devil's dictionary. The present work is an updated version of The devil's DP dictionary, with more than 500 new entries.
Kelly-Bootle seems to fancy himself Ambrose Bierce reincarnate in Silicon Valley. Like Bierce, he displays a strange outlook on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the Preface he thanks about a million people, among them the managers of Ambrose Bierce's house in St. Helena, CA, who allowed him to stay in the house. He brags that the stay included "two nights spent in Lillie Langtry's bed (she was elsewhere, alas)." I think she lucked out.
This is not a book to be entered lightly. It contains biting satire and deprecation of the English language as it is used, misused, and abused by those working in the computer industry. It also savages those who thus use the language. Sometimes the definitions, or perhaps more appropriately maldefinitions, are too true to be easily discerned as sarcasm, as...