Mouse, cookies, firewall... all these computer terms, which we have taken for granted with developing technology, each have their own story behind them, in which they actually play the role of a double agent.
A double agent mainly because they have these computer expressions in the tech world, clean another meaning, as in the usual. There may be a little more of them in the English language, but we also have them in our hands every day mouse and keep "baking" cookies. Everyday words are taken out of dictionaries, but they have a completely different meaning when they represent the computer world. Have you ever wondered where they come from?
A mouse
Computer navigation device
No one really knows where the term comes from. Even its inventor, Douglas Engelbart, no. "I don't know why they call her that mouse. Sometimes I apologize for that. That's how it started and we never changed it," he said in 1968 at a conference where he presented his creation. In another interview with Super Kids, he explained that no one remembers where the term came from, but that it looks like a mouse with a tail and that's what they told her in the lab. Roger Bates, a hardware developer who was also involved in development at the time mice, remembers things a little differently. In the book What the Dormouse Said, the cursor on the computer screen is called Cat (cat in Slovenian), so it was quite natural that the cat is chasing the mouse.
A mouse. Photo: ThinkStockBlog
Personal website for writing notes and sharing links
Expression blog is actually short for weblog (online blog). He coined it in 1997 Jorn Barger, and the term referred to his website Robot Wisdom, which "recorded his internet wanderings". Over time, the abbreviated word has become one of the most popular online pastimes.
Blog. Photo: Joselito TagaroCookies
A piece of information that is stored when we visit a website
Cookies come from "magic cookies,” an older computer term with the same meaning. Lou Montulli, the inventor of the web cookie, explained the choice of words in a note on his blog (but we're back at the blog): “The expression magic cookie I heard it in a lecture about operating systems in college... I liked it mainly for aesthetic reasons. Cookies were the first thing that came to my mind and the name stuck"
Definition of where they come from”magic cookies”, is not clear, but some theories include a connection to the ancients video games, where players had to get magic cookies to progress in the game.
Cookies. Photo: ThinkStockSpam
Spam email
For expression spam we can thank the comedy series Monty Python, in which a skit revolved around dinner with By spam in every dish. The term first caught on online primarily in chat rooms and is still today associated with annoying and repetitive things that we don't want to receive.
Memes
An idea or (re)action that spreads virally on the web
In the book The selfish gene (The Selfish Gene) from 1976 is a scientist Richard Dawkins wrote that he was looking for a word to describe the act of cultural imitation. He decided on the Greek word "mimeme,” which means to imitate something, but he shortened it to “memes", so that it could rhyme at least a little with "genes" or gene. At the same time, it is also similar to the French word même, which means "the same" in English and "the same" in Slovenian.
Expression memes then summarized and popularized the World Wide Web, which does not bother Dawkins in any way: "When someone talks about something viral on the Internet, that's exactly what memes it is," he said in an interview with Wired.
Memes. Photo: Kris OlinA hacker
A computer hacker who deals with intrusions or unauthorized access to computer networks and unauthorized data
Hacking it was not always a negative sign. In the earlier years of modern technology, it meant being smart and talented in electronics, not necessarily computers. She was born slowly hacker culture and cultivated a great deal of interest in positive technological activities. In the book Piracy Cultures the term came from the phrase - one who works as a hacker writer and experiments with software. The positivity of hacking still exists and members of this culture would be malicious hackers better called crackers.
A hacker. Photo: Adam ThomasFirewall
A security program that protects computers from harmful hackers, worms and viruses
Expression firewall has been known for a couple of centuries and represents exactly what its name describes: wall, designed to protect buildings from the spread of fire. The computer version works similarly, protecting the technology from the spread of harmful viruses.
Firewall. Photo: Jasper Nance
