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Neologisms R Us

WordSpy is an online archive that tracks new English words. Today the new word is “neuromarketing” — and my recent New York Times Magazine article on neuromarketing is listed as a citation example.

The definition that Wordspy gives is:

neuromarketing
(new.roh.MAR.kuh.ting) n. The neurological study of a person’s mental state and reactions while being exposed to marketing messages. Also: neuro-marketing.
—neuromarketer n.

WordSpy’s a pretty cool site, actually. Check out their list of the Top 100 Words, and you can see which neologisms have been most clicked-on by visitors in the past seven days. It’s a fascinating glimpse into the zeitgeist in action; my personal favorite new phrase is “time porn”, which is defined as “Television shows and other media that portray characters as having excessive amounts of spare time.”

(Thanks to Maura for this one!)


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Bio:

I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

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Recent Entries

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“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912

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a bunch of stuff

May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM

From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.

July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S

July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM

My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.

June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM

On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.

June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM

I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives. 

According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable! 

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Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson