[SIGCIS-Members] So, about these "unicorns"...

Wed Apr 8 11:23:03 PDT 2015

Also Rock Stars, Masters of the Universe, Rocket Scientists, and who can forget: Geeks. My Webster’s New World Dictionary defines “geek” as “…a performer of grotesque or depraved acts in a carnival, such as biting off the head of a live chicken.” That is the only definition it gives.

From: Members [mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Matthew Battles
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2015 1:48 PM
To: members
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] So, about these "unicorns"...

..and angels!

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Marc Weber <marc at webhistory.org<mailto:marc at webhistory.org>> wrote:
It’s a magical, magical world.

On Apr 8, 2015, at 10:17, Paul N. Edwards <pne at umich.edu<mailto:pne at umich.edu>> wrote:

long before unicorns, dragons, and trolls — in the late 1950s there were IBM and the Seven Dwarves (Sperry Rand, Control Data Corp. (CDC), RCA, Honeywell, GE, Burroughs, NCR)

On Apr 8, 2015, at 13:13 , Marc Weber <marc at webhistory.org<mailto:marc at webhistory.org>> wrote:

Don’t forget that we have trolls too….

On Apr 8, 2015, at 09:39, Henry Lowood <lowood at stanford.edu<mailto:lowood at stanford.edu>> wrote:

Tom,
Quick response from the Valley: From what I have read and heard, the "unicorn company" concept is mostly attributed to TechCrunch.  I believe the article you cited was the unveiling of the term, but TechCrunch has put out a series of posts and articles since then.
And there are dragons, too:
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/14/unicorns-vs-dragons/
This one ends, "All things being equal, I would rather back a dragon than a unicorn."
Henry
On 4/7/2015 9:23 PM, Thomas Haigh wrote:
Dear SIGCIS,

To raise a question that may or may not turn out to have an explanation within our domain of expertise, I’ve been struck recently by frequent references to “unicorns” in the business press. This crystalized over breakfast last week when I noticed an article “Stockholm: The Unicorn Factory” in my usually reserved Financial Times.

Apparently the consensus definition of a “unicorn” in this context is a newish company worth more than $1 billion. Stockholm has more per capita than anywhere but Silicon Valley. A total output of five sounds more like an atelier than a factory, and unicorns probably come from unicorn farms rather than assembly lines, but that’s not really the point.

The point is: unicorns are not just vanishingly rare. They’re mythical. Until recently, if someone told me I was pursuing a unicorn I’d have assumed they meant I was wasting my time. So where does the metaphor come from? Something that’s very rare but very valuable might be worth pursuing. Something that is flat-out imaginary seems a bad goal for investment dollars or public policy.

Is this something to do with the popularity of fantasy literature in the tech field? Did it start as some kind of joke and get out of hand? A quick Google search suggests that it was popularized with http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/, which offers no particular justification for the term beyond “to us, it means something extremely rare, and magical.”

Tom

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--

Henry Lowood

Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections;

  Film & Media Collections

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Marc Weber<http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/>  |   marc at webhistory.org<mailto:marc at webhistory.org>  |   +1 415 282 6868<tel:%2B1%20415%20282%206868>
Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum
1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory<http://computerhistory.org/nethistory>
Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org<http://webhistory.org/>

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This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org<http://sigcis.org/>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

___________________________

Paul N. Edwards
Professor of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/> and History<http://www.lsa.umich.edu/history/>, University of Michigan
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming<http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/vastmachine/index.html> (MIT Press, 2010)

Terse replies are deliberate<http://five.sentenc.es/> (and better than nothing)
University of Michigan School of Information<http://www.si.umich.edu/>
4437 North Quad
105 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1285
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Marc Weber<http://www.computerhistory.org/staff/Marc,Weber/>  |   marc at webhistory.org<mailto:marc at webhistory.org>  |   +1 415 282 6868<tel:%2B1%20415%20282%206868>
Internet History Program Founder and Curator, Computer History Museum
1401 N Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View CA 94043 computerhistory.org/nethistory<http://computerhistory.org/nethistory>
Co-founder, Web History Center and Project, webhistory.org<http://webhistory.org>

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--
matthew battles
associate director, metaLAB (at) harvard<http://metalab.harvard.edu/>
fellow, berkman center for internet and society<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu>
twitter = @matthewbattles<http://twitter.com/matthewbattles>
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