The Rice University Neologisms Database

Those people who are the literati of the tech world. The savvy and knowledgeable users of computers and the internet. Many people have refused to accept the onset of technology; others have been too inept or lazy to learn new skills. These people prefer hardcopy to softcopy any day, and are willing to shell out for it when the same content is online for free. On the other hand, those members of the digerati, advanced users accustomed to the ubiquity of free information on the net, are unlikely to pay for these same services. It is not a matter of price; as the articles mentions, even wealthy Wall Street types are insistent on online content gratis. The word is an apt blend suited for Mr. Nocera’s purpose. There is no one word that clearly defines the group better—you often hear ‘tech savvy’ but digerati blends two similar meaning words. Like most blends, it is smooth and logical, and the two words lend themselves to blending. However, digerati is a term that we’d only see in writing. As we know, Latin words tend to be more hifalutin and not common in spoken English. Hardly any ‘digerati’ would describe themselves with the same word. It is not at all insider parlance of the internet community. Calling tech savvy people ‘digital literati’ sounds like a feeble attempt at Romanticizing them.