What has been happening in your life? How are you? This term, now used as a conversation-starter, may have originated in “What’s the news?” and dates from the early twentieth century. Robert M. Pirsig gives it broader meaning in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974): “‘What’s new?’ is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow.”