Computer age brings with it plenty of new words By JIM SCHUH of The Gazette The computer age has brought us many new words - words that people just 50 years ago could never have imagined. Here's an example: They call the stuff we enter into our computers "input." Whoever came up with the word apparently thought that reversing the two words and sticking them together to make the word "input" sounded better than "putin." I suppose it's fortunate the wordmaker chose "input," because if the choice had been "putin," we'd be confusing our keystrokes with the name of the current Russian leader, Putin. These made-up computer words have spilled over to other elements of daily living. When we gather several people together to get some idea of how they feel about a certain matter, we now call that getting "input." When we gauge the volume of work we accomplish, we term that "output." It's easy to figure out why "output" became the choice - we already have rather clear definitions of the term "put out." It can mean annoyed or embarrassed, extinguished, to publish, a play to retire a baseball player and also to engage in sex. There was no need to add one more definition. If you have done any study about how computers work, you know that machines once used an operating system called DOS (Disk Operating System). You don't hear much about DOS any more, since Microsoft introduced its Windows operating system. In recent months, the DOS initials have returned - as computer hackers have managed to tie up some rather large Web sites with their mischievous programs. The havoc they've caused is called D.O.S., but this time it stands for "denial of service." Seems to me those computer types could have come up with some different letters - since having two "DOS" definitions within computerdom is as confusing as computers themselves. If you have just recently begun to move into the computer age, you are facing the unpleasant task of learning to type words with no spaces between them, and not even using capital letters for proper names. When you want to go to the Web site of the Portage County Gazette, for instance, you have to get on the Internet and then type www.pcgazette.com. The Internet doesn't like spaces or capital letters, so we have to run our words together. For those of us born late in the Depression or during World War II, think back on the horrors we would have faced for such spelling transgressions from our eighth-grade English teacher. It was worse if she was a nun. It's quite obvious the geek who decided that Internet addresses could contain no spaces between words never met Sister Mary Kevin, O.S.F. (who was unfortunate enough to have me as a student in both seventh and eighth grades!) She didn't discipline with a stick - just a cold stare from her was enough to get her point across. Today, you might even call it getting "input" from the dear sister! * * * Companies with shareholders hold annual meetings, and many of them come at this time of year. The annual meeting is a legal requirement whose aim is to give shareholders the opportunity to learn about what's been going on in a first-hand report from the officers. The usual annual meeting includes election of members of the board of directors, a canned presentation by the company CEO to put the best face on the past year's results, even when they're terrible, and then a few questions and answers - which almost always are written on 3-by-5 file cards for the boss to answer. Not many CEOs relish taking live questions about their own performance from the shareholders out front. All this means that most annual meetings aren't much fun. They're boring - like watching a TV show you've seen scores of times. Very few of them provide any new information. After attending annual meetings of companies around here for many years, I've come to the conclusion that I go because of the food the outfits serve when the meeting's over. In fact, for a while, I used to swear I could tell you how well a company performed by the quality of cookies it served shareholders when the annual meeting was finished. Wouldn't it be more fun, and more democratic, if all company CEOs had to take live questions from shareholders? The stockholders could shout at, accuse, defile and demean a chief executive who had presided over a lousy year. They could get to see those highly paid gurus squirm and perspire - especially after overseeing a year when the company's stock price dropped by half, while the president got a 10 percent pay increase and huge stock options. At a recent annual meeting of a company whose stock price is in the doldrums, we met two stockbroker-types on the way in, who stopped to ask if we had brought along rotten tomatoes. We hadn't, but thinking back, wouldn't it have been fun... You may reach Jim Schuh at the Gazette, or by e-mail at jpschuh@excite.com.