Love Bug Havoc
Back in the 1970s, my brother stopped in South Carolina on his way home from a Florida vacation. The front grill of his 1968 Mercury Cougar was nearly black; it was covered with the mortal remains of countless small bugs. I learned from him that these unfortunate creatures were called "love bugs," and that clouds of them hovered over the hot Florida highways at that particular time of year.

Today the Florida love bugs are still with us, and because I moved from South Carolina to Florida in 1990, I now see them up close as I drive around the Tampa Bay area. They continue to wreak havoc on car grills, although love bugs undoubtedly put a smile on the face of local carwash owners. I understand that they are not merely a Florida phenomenon, but in fact can be found from Texas to South Carolina, especially near the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

During the first week of May 2000, a new computer virus appeared on the scene. Unlike some previous viruses, this one made national news headlines because of the incredible speed with which it spread around the world and the huge percentage of computer users who were affected by it. As with previous viruses, this one was given a name so people could easily talk about it: the "I Love You" virus (because the message spread via e-mail and carried a subject line that read, "I Love You").

But it is human nature to give the shortest possible name to things we talk about frequently, and it wasn't long before people began to refer to it as the two-syllable "Love Bug." After all, we already refer to biological viruses as "bugs," and the term "bug" has also been associated with computer problems since at least the 1950s. Using the term "love bug" to refer to this new threat was natural.

Computer-World Avatars
On a different, and I hope more positive note, the digital world was treated to the release of "Ananova" near the end of April 2000. Ananova, which can be found at www.ananova.com, is the name given to a "virtual newscaster." In other words, "she" is a new millennium version of an animated cartoon character that reads aloud the latest news. (After all, if Betty Crocker isn't a real person, then why do our newscasters have to be real?) Ananova brings to mind another new term, although to understand its origin, we'll need to go back a few hundred years, when the term "avatar" first entered the English language. Derived from a Sanskrit word, the word "avatar" referred to an incarnation of a Hindu god in the form of a human or animal. We English speakers like to take specific words and generalize them to fit larger concepts, and so the word "avatar" then took on the bigger meaning of "any person who personifies an idea".

Once computer technology made it possible for us to create three-dimensional online worlds, we needed a word to describe the cartoon-like figures used to represent the real humans who "moved around" within these worlds. Think of this as not just a typical chat room (the kind where you read text scrolling up your screen that has been typed by other people), but instead more like a masquerade party where everyone is wearing some sort of costume to represent themselves; although in this case, the "costume" is an animated figure that appears on your computer monitor. So, what do I call that particular 3-D image on my screen that represents you? Why, your "avatar," of course!

If you use Microsoft software products, you're probably used to avatar-like help facilities, such as that overly smug paperclip character that used to pop up on my screen, until I changed him (it?) into a cat. Don't be too surprised if one of the next versions of your favorite genealogy software package provides you with an optional avatar to give you helpful genealogical advice. If he's not too smug, I might even listen to him!

Drew Smith is an instructor with the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He is also a regular contributor to the quarterly journal Genealogical Computing, where he writes the "Cybrarian" column (formerly known as "Infobahn"). He can be reached at drewsmith@aol.com.