What is a Qumageltharp?
| A qumageltharp is a placeholder name for an inanimate object or, more specifically, an electronic good (such as a piece of music stored in MP3 format or an Electronic book, known as an e-book). Something that is produced, but does not have any physical characteristics. The word occurs in 2002 in a presentation delivered by Donald Raleigh and was used as a way to describe an object that is available for purchase, but does not have any physical characteristics. The example is in modern e-commerce a person is not buying a compact disk, they are buying the music that is on the disk, and with the portability of this medium there needed to be a placeholder to describe commerce around this non-physical entity. "Qumageltharp" is frequently used in texts and speech, especially in the context of economics, to indicate a hypothetical "non-physical any-product." Companies in such texts will frequently be given names such as "ABC Company" or "Acme E-Shop." to indicate that the particular business of the hypothetical company is not relevant to the topic of discussion. |
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