GLOSSARY


	Anamorphosis: a painting or drawing that is distorted or unrecognizable except when viewed from a particular angle and distance or with a correcting mirror or lens; also, the technique by which such an image is drawn (see DIY instructions). Normal images are composed for a viewer’s gaze and consist of only two coordinates: the vertical surface of the image and the orthogonal line. In anamorphic images there are three coordinates: the vertical, the horizon, and the oblique line from the diagonal corner to the image (see list of links). In general, a distinction is made between cylindrical anamorphosis and perspective anamorphosis.

	Branding: describes the professional development of a trademark, used to make a product more easy to recognize, to clearly distinguish it from competitive products, and to create customer loyalty. It primarily applies to brand names, which must be memorable and not evoke any negative associations. Visual appearance, such as form, color, and logo, as well as the cultivation of intangible values (providing meaning, life style options, philosophy) are of immanent importance for branding.

	CEO: short for Chief Executive Officer

	"Close Encounters of the Third Kind": American science-fiction film, Steven Spielberg, 1977. Aided by this film, cultural scientist around the turn of the century argued that humans were only capable of maintaining smooth relations with strange machines over a long period of time with the help of a catalyst. This was often art equipped with playful, interactive characteristics (such as 3D art), which not only narrowed the gap between humans and machines, but also created new relationships.

	Chief Executive Officer: American title for the person at the top of the hierarchy of a public company. Corresponds to the German titles Vorstandsvorsitzenden or Sprecher des Vorstandes.

	Comenius: an instructional research media project at the end of the 20th century. Starting in 2003, it was used in classrooms to introduce students in German-speaking countries to new media. A user interface that can be used intuitively was invented. It leaves space for individual creativity and visualizes the appropriate types of multimedia communication for each corresponding instructional situation. This tool, which is still in use today, made it possible to communicate, discuss, and learn in network worlds with the help of a visually interesting and ergonomically correct surface.

	Corporate culture: Up until the 1980s, companies had only one aim: to expand and maximize profits. Market saturation then forced companies to think about other aspects, such as corporate culture, which is made up of various and sundry elements. What is the corporate philosophy, how does the company communicate with its partners, the media, and its employees? Developing corporate culture was regarded as the way to examine how employees felt at work.

	Corporate style: expression for the uniform style of a firm, which communicates its corporate culture via visual codes (eg. logos).

	Cylindrical anamorphic image: in a cylindrical anamorphic image, a cylindrical mirror, or sometimes a type of vase, is placed upon the picture in order to reveal the distorted surface. See Grubingers #1: Generation Gap.

	Day Trader: American term for stock market speculators with short-term vision generally limited to 24 hours. It was a profession that was fashionable for a long time and offered a great deal of material for Hollywood movies, until 2015. The character of the day trader was also greatly applauded in fan-operated Internet cinemas, where it was fodder for many amateur film clips made by former day traders, so-called day trader veterans.

	Digital Divide: term describing the split in society between those who use computers and their languages, and those who do not. A term still used by Internet and IT historians, the digital divide referred to the gap between the various levels of education, income classes, and population groups.

	Digital marketplace: Sales platform in the Internet. The digital marketplace was meant to make it easier for entire branches to exchange wares and to save money when selling and buying goods. Besides Internet access, no other equipment is necessary.

	Dubai Media City: Strategically located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, at the crossroads of the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, Dubai Media City (DMC) has been the region's media hub for more than 50 years now. DMC has been established by the Dubai Technology, E-Commerce and Media Free Zone Authority to provide the infrastructure and environment that will enable media-related enterprises to operate globally out of Dubai. DMC is still the place where every kind of media business, including Broadcasting, Publishing, Advertising, Public Relations, Research, Music, and Post-Production thrives.

	E-Commerce: short for electronic commerce. Means electronic marketing and dealing with goods and services via the Internet.

	Generation@: describes the generation of young people who grew up with computers. All children in industrialized countries consider the computer to be an ordinary tool that they use competently, but without great respect, whereas the preceding generation regarded this instrument from a critical distance. The term also reflects the new self-confidence and entrepreneurial spirit of this generation.

	IT-Firm: -> IT branch

	IT historian: chronicler and archaeologist in the IT branch. This profession came into being around the turn of the century, in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 2001, when IT firms rapidly disappeared without a trace.

	IT branch: Information technologies branch. Around the turn of the century, the IT branch mostly included companies that dealt with new computer and telecommunications-based communications and work media. At the beginning, computer and software inventors and manufacturers, telephone companies, and Internet service and content providers were regarded as IT companies.

	Killer Application: an application (including hardware) that fundamentally alters business by generating its own independent global market. The most outstanding example in the Internet is E-mail.

	M-Commerce: short for mobile commerce, referring to business conducted over mobile telephones. M-commerce comes from the term E-commerce, but refers instead to possible orders and profits made over cell phones connected to the Internet.

	Multitasking: put together from the terms "multi" and "task." Originally, the term came from computer technology and described the ability of an operating system to run several programs at the same time. At the end of the twentieth century, this capability was expected not only from computers, but also from employees. During those days, employees of an IT firm were required to not only work on one project, but were also expected to quickly and flexibly divide their attention between several tasks. However, as the number of parallel tasks increased, it was observed that employees became less efficient and concentrated. Soon robots equipped with artificial intelligence were installed to assist employees.

	New Economy: A term that became popular in the USA during the latter half of the 1990s. At first, it was specially applied to describe the enduring prosperity of the IT branch, then later, it increasingly defined a new economy in transition from late industrialization to a computer-supported knowledge industry. Today, the term is not only used to describe young public corporations on the New Market, but also to describe the transformation process of an economy supported by capital and workers, to an economy in which the productive factors are knowledge and creativity. So the New Economy is the economic form of the knowledge society.

	New Market: a special segment of the Frankfurt stock market for growth and technology stocks, introduced in April of 1997. With no more than two stocks (Bertrandt and Mobilcom), the New Market experienced a breakthrough at the beginning of 1998, when, in a TV show, the somewhat verbose stock market guru Egbert Prior prophesized that Mobilcom stocks would go up several hundred points – and he was right.

	Perspective anamorphic image: a classic example is Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting "The French Ambassadors," painted in 1533. As soon as you look at it from the side, the strange thing in the lower foreground between the two figures appears to be a death’s head. See also: Grubinger’s #2: Black Out, #3: Team Bullying, or #4: Corpus Modulare.

	Rhizome: root stock. Used by post-structural theorists in a philosophical context (see for example, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "Introduction: Rhizome," A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Brian Massumi, trans., University of Minnesota Press 1987) to describe principles for organizing knowledge, among other things. Without any reference to philosophy, the term was reactivated to describe the ideological superstructure of the New Economy. Under this term, decentralization of social and corporate structures was propagated. In 2010, Bill Gates founded the Deleuze Prize, when he and his company were yet again the defendants in another anti-trust trial.

	Stock: stock is represented by a transferable stock certificate, which attests to co-ownership of a share or shares in a public company.

	Stock option: a right granted by a corporation to officers or employees as a form of compensation that allows purchase of corporate stock at a fixed price at a specific time with reimbursement derived from the difference between purchase and market prices. In the USA, stock options were a normal form of compensation; in Europe, they were usually only granted by New Economy companies. When the New Market recovered and soared to new heights, owning stock became more important than having the right to vote in a political election. Between 2020 to 2030, the stock market was referred to as "ersatz democracy." It was global (oriented toward the policies of transnational concerns) and seemed to be an appropriate tool for a power structure made of flexible networks. Only recently, since the beginning of this decade, has the status of stocks as a political instrument lost some importance.

	Teamwork: several people working together as a group. In an ideal situation, the people involved interact with each other as partners, with respect for the competence and personal integrity of the others. At the beginning of the 21st century, the ability to work in a team was considered to be one of the most important qualities an employee could have. It quickly became the non plus ultra of management theory and to this day is a very popular practice.

	Telelearning: put together from the words "telecommunications" and "learning." It describes a method of learning using new media in a particular place and time. E-learning or online learning were also used as synonyms until about 2035, when telelearning became the general term, shortened simply to TL. In TL, content is dialed up through the Internet, so that students can learn whenever and wherever they want to.

	Tone Master Digital: workout machine from Best Direct, whose core idea was to get rid of physical movement altogether. Using three separate programs, you could tone up every area of your body without much effort. In 15 minutes, for example, it was possible to work your stomach muscles about 200 times. Long dealt with as a killer application in the fitness branch, it was proved to Best Direct in 2044 that the machine caused chronic skin damage, and the company took the machine out of circulation. One year later a new version of it reappeared on the market.