nomenclature

A book by any other name

I liked Tim’s recent Gadget Lab post about the Kindle 3. And I really liked his use of the term “reading machine” at the end. Everything becomes clear now: our friend Mr. Carmody has found a perfect platform for the promulgation of a meme.

In other ebook nomenclature news, I am fully on board with the word livrel. Let’s save that search and watch it spread, shall we?

 

The Rumplestiltskin Effect

Ask MetaFilter commenters agree: Knowing someone’s name because his boss forces him to wear a name tag does not constitute permission to use that name. Having settled on the consensus that addressing name-tagged employees by their first names is creepy, the commenters attempt to tease out why. Judging by the comments, your age might influence how much you agree with their consensus.

 

The Search Decade

What to call the ten years we’re now closing down? I am unmoved by “the Naughts” and even by “the Naughties,” which is clever but (it seems to me) wishful. I mean, come on. They weren’t that naughty.

Over in the St. Petersburg Times, Michael Kruse suggests the Search Decade. It might not grab you immediately, but go read his pitch. Even if you walk away still calling it the Naughties, it’ll help you appreciate just how long a decade is:

Back in May 2000, which wasn’t that long ago, which was forever ago, the New Yorker’s Michael Specter wrote a piece partly about Google in which he felt it necessary to define search engines: “programs that hunt for Web pages in response to specific words or phrases.”

I like the style and pacing of Kruse’s piece. I also like, of course, the fact that he uses EPIC 2014 as a hook!