"This is the wave of the future, and if you don't like it, you need to move to a different universe."
—Jerry Youhanaie, president of Acacia National Mortgage Corp., saying his company won't stop marketing its loans in wireless advertising spots, despite the outcry over spam sent to cellphones.

REDMOND’S LORD OF THE RING

In the manner of J.R.R. Tolkien, an e-mail correspondent tells this story:

Recently, I told a computer wizard friend how happy I was with the Windows XP I’d installed on my PC. To my surprise he threw the XP CD into my microwave and turned it on, saying, “Do not worry, it is unharmed.”

After a few minutes, he took the CD out and said: “Take a close look at it.”

It was cold and seemed heavier. On the inner edge of the central hole I saw an inscription, a ring that shone piercingly bright:

12413AEB2ED4FA5E6F7D78E78BEDE820945092OF923A40EElOE5IOCC98D444AA08E324

"I cannot understand the fiery letters,” I said.

“The letters are Hex, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Microsoft,” he said. “It is two lines from a verse long known in System lore. In common English, the verse says:

Three OSs from corporate kings in their towers of glass,
Seven from valley lords where orchards used to grow,
Nine from dot-coms doomed to die,
One from the Dark Lord Gates on his dark throne
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.
One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them,
One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Redmond where the Shadows lie.”

LIFE IS A CABERNET, OLD CHUM

Used to be that the sommelier handed you the big, tasseled wine list with a flourish. Well, at Aureole Las Vegas, the wine director, Andrew Vadjinia, now slips you a wireless computer with an 11-inch screen. Called the eWine book, the computer lets customers scroll through the 3,500 varieties in the restaurants.

“I’ve had this idea for a number of years, to design some kind of wireless tracking system for wine,” says Vadjinia, who was having trouble generating paper lists that kept up with changes in inventory. He adds that the eWine book provides “pictures of winemakers, with their profiles, plus vineyard information and general information.”

For those intimidated by the whole rigmarole around wine selection, the hand-held device offers tasting notes, reviews, and suggestions for which wine to pair with which food. “You’ll feel quite comfortable with what you’re ordering,” Vadjinia says.

IS IT RED WINE THAT GOES WITH ROADKILL?

When word came that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retail chain (www.walmart.com), was teaming up with E.& J. Gallo Winery (www.gallo.com) to sell wine at an affordable price, some online wine snobs immediately created a set of suggested labels for the various Wal-Mart wines: Among these were:

 Chateau Traileur Doublewide

 White Trashfindel

 NASCARbernet

 Peanut Noir

 Chateau des Moines

 I Can’t Believe It’s Not Vinegar!

 World Championship Wriesling

The No. 1 favorite was: Nasti Spumante.

RUOK WITH THIS?

The Internet is revolutionizing language, according to David Crystal, who has written dozens of books about language, including the recent Language and the Internet. Rooting through chat rooms and e-mails (as well as emails and E-mails), he says he sees a whole new approach to communication that goes well beyond new spellings, “smileys” such as :-), and abbreviations such as RUOK (“are you OK?”), TAFN (“that’s all for now”), and GAL (“get a life”). Context Managing Editor Pegeen Hopkins, who talked to Crystal about what the Internet is doing to language, writes: “you’ll find this interesting. tafn.”

CONTEXT: The Internet is socially revolutionary. Is it also linguistically revolutionary?

DAVID CRYSTAL: When I started writing Language and the Internet, I didn’t know what the answer would be. By the end, I concluded the answer is definitely yes.

So far, there have been just three revolutions in the history of the human language. About 30,000 or 40,000 years ago, speech appeared. Then, 10,000 or 12,000 years ago, writing started. Now we’re taking another major step.

The Internet allows us to do things with language we were never able to do before. For example, cutting and pasting pieces of e-mails when sending them back and forth and in many different directions is a completely new practice.

It also wasn’t possible for people to have more than one conversation at a time. At a cocktail party, there are 30 conversations going on, but you really pay attention to only one or two at a time. In a chat room, as messages come from 30 people around the world, you can simultaneously participate in many conversations.

CONTEXT: Some critics believe the Internet will mangle language and grammar. What do you think?

CRYSTAL: I think the Internet shows how healthy our linguistic ability is. People have started to play around with language in amazing ways. Many new words have short lifespans, and you don’t know whether they are going to stay around. Still, there is now an extraordinary range of invented words.

The time it takes for a word to become known and accepted has sped up dramatically. Previously, when a word came into being, it would take years before it traveled around the world and became part of established language. Now a word introduced in one part of the world this morning might be everywhere by this evening.

CONTEXT: What do you see for the future of the Internet and language?

CRYSTAL: Even though the Internet began wholly as an English-language medium, it’s rapidly ceasing to be so. Some people expect English to be down to 50% of Internet usage by 2003.

The Internet is also giving lesser-used languages a new lease on life. I found more than 1,000 languages on the Internet. Many of them—the North American Indian languages, for example—were at real risk of dying out.