Poor tragic random. The word itself, I mean. Bandied about so much in the past year, mainly misappropriated and abused, it's now left like an orphan without a home.  

Random once meant 'lacking any definate plan or pre-arranged order' - as in playing songs in random mode on CD. The past year has not only seen the adjective doubling up as a noun, but applied to everything from small talk to technology, pastime to people ('The conversation was so random, I hung up on him'... 'He was some random I met on the Net and our shag only lasted ten minutes'... 'My mobile looked like some random old brick in my bag, so I chucked it and bought a smaller one' ).  

In an age where we hook up with strangers on the web after chatting for only a few minutes, then trash their details when we've met them face to face and don't like something trivial about them; where we get bored of an MP3 track just twenty seconds in, so skip it and the next sixteen until we find that obcurely titled white label our bedroom boffin MySpace pal in Belgium sent us; where we witness talentless nobodies becoming fabulous somebodies on TV overnight then forgotten one month later, it's no wonder a word that connotes haphazardness has infiltrated the modern vernacular like an uncontainable virus.  

But like all those disposable objects it's been applied to - the temporary online buddies, the outmoded gadgets and gizmos, the outdated digital files, washed-up telly 'celebrities', and here today/gone tomorrow trade - 'random' looks like having reached it's use-by date.  

Are you sure you want to delete file 'random'? Yes please.