I am a bit pedantic about words and I sometimes find the English language a bit messy and illogical.  Anyway, I was compiling a glossary in our knowledge base for the work that we do and I remembered that there are some words which don’t officially exist yet.

Here at Ecotech Services we commonly describe our business activity as “repair, refurbishment, and recycling of electrical, electronic, and computer equipment.”  I can see the potential for a new word here to make the phrase less of a mouthful.

Now computers are just a particular type of electronic equipment so it is really a redundant word in our description but we put it in there because computers are seen by a lot of people as being separate to electronics stuff. People often get confused about the correct terminology to use for technology.

Customers sometime describe a desktop computer box as a hard drive whereas in actual fact the hard drive is just one of the assemblies in the box.  And that reminds me of my more youthful days back in the ’70s and ’80s.  Back then – in an era pre-dating Walkmans, boomboxes, MP3 players, and now smartphones – we relied on radios to get music and information.  The portable radios were often called “transistors” which is a misnomer for the correct term of transistorised radios.

So getting back to 21st century language I think we need just one word that describes “electrical, electronic, and computer equipment” because all this stuff uses electricity.  I think the word should be “e-technology ” and it can be shortened to e-tech.

There are a lot of other e-words in my job – e-mail, e-waste, e-scrap, e-cycling (but we should use e-recycling because this does not make it sound like an electric bike), and now I can add e-tech.  And I guess I am an e-technician.  An e-techie.  And Ecotech Services does e-repair and e-recycling of e-technology.

Nice!