I recently attended my first, and perhaps last, Webinar. Since encountering the term (and after duly registering and attending) I’ve come to understand that webinars are old hat to the tech savvy, but I remain unconvinced that all of this new techno-wonder is necesssarily wondrous. (Power point presenters, for example, should, in my humble opinion, be confined in a small room with laser beams bashing them on the head until they promise NEVER to put up a list of items and proceed to read the list of items in a deadpan drone as if their audience were illiterate.) This particular webinar addressed the issue of POLST forms: Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment, something new and handy for people very close to dying and I’ll be happy to explore these issues with anyone. But the hours of webinars, in my humble opinion again, don’t accomplish a thing more than what a few good forms (which were indeed furnished in advance by the webinar sponsors) and a Q&A Web page could do.
More to the point, while I’m sitting here being cranky, is the business of new words sneaking into the vocabulary without so much as a nod to decency. No rhythm, no lyricism, not a smidge of beauty or imagination. I’m cool with the verb ‘to google’ and a few others that may be making Mr. Webster squirm in his grave, but webinar for heaven’s sake? The world is full of better words. My husband, who is even, ahem, older than I and maintains a vocabulary about triple that of most of us, subscribes to A.Word.A.Day, a giant storehouse of words old and new and fascinating. Maybe, if someone would ask nicely, the Wordsmith people could come up with something better than webinar.