The word digitariat is new to me but is at least 9 years old. I don’t know who coined it and have no proof that it is Canadian. The earliest clearly dated citation of digitariat that I have found is from Wired magazine online, issue 4.11, November 1996, in an article by Jason Sheftell:

“As the digital revolution shifts into warp speed, some cyber soothsayers worry that average Americans will be left tinkering in the garage while the wealthy zip around in virtual spaceships. Technological apartheid, they say, could further widen socioeconomic inequities, creating a ‘digitariat’ of unwired have-nots.”

Digitariat was formed by analogy with proletariat. Prōlētārius is the immediate nounal origin in Latin. Proletarius arose as a label according to a division of the Roman people by Servius Tullius. A proletarius was a citizen of the lowest class, who served the state not with his property, but only with his children (Latin, proles), a proletary. As an adjective it meant low or common quite early, for the Roman comic dramatist Plautus refers to sermo proletarius ‘vulgar gossip.’ The basic Latin root of the word is proles ‘offspring.’

Karl Marx used the word proletariat as a synonym for ‘working class,’ men and women without wealth who sold their labour to the rich owning classes.

You may review definitions of the term proletariat at this well-written web page

http://www.answers.com/topic/proletariat

One reason the word may not endure too long is: its contradictory definitions. Some print and electronic commentators use digitariat to refer to the elite entrepreneurs and computer mavens who operate and control the digital world, a complete volte-face from the term’s original meaning.

Here is a citation of that usage. In a November 2001 article entitled “Towards a people’s alternative to ‘intellectual property rights,’ ” Pio Verzola, Jr., a Philippine writer on technology, used the word in this way:

“On the other hand, the same technological revolution has in fact enhanced the social character of production and the role of the working class in leading the way out of the capitalist crisis.  Contrary to the pipedream that a new elite ‘digitariat’ has pulled the rug out from under the proletariat, droves of white-collar, computer-literate workers are in fact joining the category of industrial workers. If at all, the proletariat is absorbing unto itself the intellectual qualities of the so-called ‘digitariat.’ ”

Such a topsy-turvy tumble in the meaning of a word is not new in the history of English. Consider the adjective nice, which began its English life as a word meaning ‘stupid.’ But when a new word has opposing definitions its chance of survival is diminished.

© 2005

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