Our orator
Thomas Beckett
thomas at tbeckett.com
Mon Jan 3 10:59:11 EST 2000
If you haven't already, definitely read Christina Dyrness's interview
with our own Steven Champeon in today's N&O Biz section. As usual,
Steven is interesting and articulate.
http://www.news-observer.com/daily/2000/01/03/biz02.html
I particularly dig the story about Steven's entry into online rhetoric
in the Spider Robinson newsgroup.
Interestingly, Christina introduces him as "a great online orator".
While I fully agree in the sense she intended, my semantic brain cannot
sit still with that usage. This is because the word "orator" comes from
the Latin root for "mouth": one who uses his mouth. So "online orator"
is rather a contradiction in terms. He uses his fingers, not his
mouth. (Actually he uses his head, but the fingers -- or mouth -- form
the words.)
Potential tasteless jokes aside, perhaps a more appropriate word for an
Internet rhetorician -- and I really love this -- is "digitor".
"Steven Champeon: great online digitor." Can you roll with that one?
Tom
More information about the InterNetWorkers
mailing list