When someone says: “My website has died”, we may think ha ha ha, they have anthropomorphised their website (i.e. they talk about it as if it were a human being). But if they were to say: “My website has expired”, we think oh, they forgot to pay their annual hosting fee so it’s gone offline. And what does ‘expired’ actually mean? Died!
Have you noticed how much computer-speak has evolved from war-like language?
Examples include ‘boot up’ (from putting army boots on in the morning), ‘execute program’ (yes, you have to kill it to run it!), ‘my PC’s gone down/bombed/crashed’.
Perhaps it’s because much IT was originally designed for military purposes.
Can you think of any more examples?
