Adam Blatner

(This is a neologism, a made-up word, describing the problems of those who interface with technology. Hypertrophic is a big word meaning over-grown.)

I have a friend who, though using handheld devices for a fair length of time, may not have been all that familiar with all options. For example: What is the real meaning of the "Like" button. This fellow used his smart phone with Google’s Boxer app (which helps him track emails, to dos, and projects from multiple email accounts, and also offers the feature that he is able to "Like" any particular email postings. In fact, he’s generally avoided the "Like" button, until he saw a post he did like very much. So he pressed that button! Yikes! Instead of his "Like" appearing on facebook,  in this case the listserve just got back a beautiful repetition and reflection of itself, a  message with no message but rather with the previous list attached of old messages!

So who is to blame? The ignorance of my friend who is actually a rather bright fellow? The technology? The interface, the challenges of making technology user-friendly rather than “Yikes-ish.” Is this then a fair example of hyper-trophic  technolog-osis? Ha ha!