W the hell is "Cyberinfrastructure"(aka I expected better from the IEEE Computer Society Magazine)

We live in a strange era of "tubes", "Engrish" and "Yet Another Invented Word Misusing Word Stems".

What is the subject of my wrath? Quite simple really.... The use of the prefix "cyber-" to mean "The Inter-Network".

Cyber-this... Cyber-that... What a load of rubbish. It is diluting the real meaning of Cybernetics, which is the science of feedback and control engineering.

And this rubbish word "Cyberinfrastructure", as seen at the top of page 40 of the January 2009 edition of the IEEE Computer Society magazine "Computer", is a case of a few people wanting to sound "smarter" by abusing a word used in science and engineering.

To me, they have just made themselves sound less educated.
Instead of the abomnation "cyberinfrastructure", why not use "network infrastructure" or "data grid".

Bah!

You may choose to blame my rant on the fact that I have a degree in Cybernetics.

Random thought

With how often I use the CDROM drive in a laptop, I wouldn't mind if they went away completely. I think my next personal laptop will not have such low-density storage built in but only as an external device. That freed space could be used for other stuff such as more battery or even to reduce the overall bulk of the machine.

Makes something like the MacBook Air a tempting choice for the future: 2010 is the year when I will replace my personal laptop.

(Katie would disagree: She uses her laptop as a personal DVD player)