In the game of marketing, this ever-shifting technology is our greatest friend and our worst enemy. We look like visionary heroes to our clients when we create an embedded Twitter feed that auto-substitutes a series of handwriting fonts for their micro-site. But the next day they are frustrated beyond words when we tell them that they can’t put that simple video into their Powerpoint presentation.

So what to do? Should we shield our clients from the icky inner workings so we appear to be all-knowing technology magicians who work miracles—only to on occasion disappoint completely when our wand turns out to be incompatible with the archaic legacy platform their inventory database is built on? Or should we pull our clients into the technology swamp with us so they can can empathize with the slogging, sloppy mess that it can so often be?

The latter approach might mean technology loses some of its romance, but at least 12:30 AM tech support phone calls might become just that much more pleasant.

Oxford University Press USA, in a blog post, said “unfriend”, a verb, had beaten netbook, sexting, paywall, birther and death panel for the honour.

“Unfriend has real lex-appeal,” said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford’s US dictionary program.

“It has both currency and potential longevity,” she said. “In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for word of the year.”

Previous words of the year include carbon neutral, locavore and hypermiling.

Locavores are people who eat locally grown food while hypermilers modify their cars and driving techniques to maximise petrol mileage.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond’ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more
“Save!” I said, “You cursed mother! Save my data from before!”
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more
Just, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I’d never faced before.
Carefully, I weighed the choices as the disk made monstrous noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more.
>From “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

With my fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted, words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore.
Saying, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

I tried to catch the chips off-guard- I pressed again, but twice as hard
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried, and then I swore.
The I tried in desperation, sev’ral random combination,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, mocking, winking, flashing nonsense as before.
Reading, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

There I sat, Distraught, exhausted,; by my own machine accosted
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bold cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data goes.
What demonic nether world is wrought where data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, in black holes?
But sure as there’s C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, “Abort, Retry, Ignore?”
(Author Unknown)