electively.html - adjective (Science and Technology) In machine-readable form; existing as data which must be read by a computer. Especially in: electronic mail (often abbreviated to email or e-mail), the transfer of messages or files of data in machine-readable form from one user to one or more others by means of a computer network; also, the messages that are sent and received using this facility; electronic publishing, the publication of text in machine-readable form (on
tape , discs, CD-ROM, etc.) rather than on paper; texts published in this way; electronic text (sometimes abbreviated to etext), the machine-readable version of a text, which is created by data capture. Etymology: A development of the adjective electronic in the sense 'operated by the methods, principles, etc. of electronics' in which a subtle shift from active to passive has taken place: whereas in the
original term electronic data processing (a synonym for computing in the sixties), electronic referred principally to the processing
rather than to the data, now it is
applied also to the 'soft'
copy of the text, the object of the processing. Instead of
being operated by electronics, these electronic media
may only be operated upon by electronic
equipment (in practice, specifically by computer). This shift is evident
within the development of the term electronic mail itself, which at first only referred to the system (operated electronically), but later
came to be used also of the messages (existing in a form which
meant that they had to be operated upon by the computer). In general during this period electronic has tended to become a synonym for computerized. History and Usage: Electronic mail, which relies upon
data transfer across telecommunications networks, began in the late seventies and by the mid eighties was frequently abbreviated to email or e-mail. Electronic publishing had begun during the seventies, but did not acquire this name until 1979 and only became a growth industry in the mid eighties; it tends to be popularly confused with conventional publishing using electronic techniques (especially desk-top publishing). The proliferation of electronic text was a
natural result of the growth of electronic publishing and increasing use of computers for editing and research work
during the eighties. When our coded file arrives, PPI's Atex
computer merges electronic
text and digitized artwork into a
complete page. Chemical Week 28 July 1982, p.
7 The first Electronic Publishing conference was held at Wembley four years ago. Daily Telegraph 13 June 1988, p.
27 We
read and respond to e-mail as it pleases us, not
at our correspondent's convenience. New Scientist 6 May 1989, p.
66 Just now the
Soviet people are getting into networking. They are not yet used to the idea of electronic mail. Guardian 3 Aug. 1989, p. 20
