Thanks for the kind comments. I think your discussion about names and languages is more important, not only because some of its silly, but unique nonetheless. I have long that there is a very large body of serious research that needs to be done--and that has yet to be started in any serious way--about the entire vocabulary of computing. IBM published a number of dictionaries of IT terms, and these pubs carried thousands of words, many of which continued to rapidly change in definitions and specifics, many within just 3 to 5 years. I keep hoping that a small groupf English professors would take on this project. Jim On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 2:11 PM Ceruzzi, Paul via Members < members@lists.sigcis.org> wrote:
I finally had a chance to look at the summary of Jim's book from CBI, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I always found IBM's control over nomenclature noteworthy: "Electronic Data Processing," not "Computer"; "Diskette" not "floppy"; "pointing Device" not "mouse." And others. I remember being shocked – shocked! when IBM called its OS2 operating system "Warp." So out of place, but the world, and IBM, moved on.
Now we see the proliferation of what I consider inappropriate names for software and services that have a serious place in society: Google, Twitch, Slack, Yahoo! When Tom Haigh & I were writing our Third Edition, we had a discussion about whether to include the exclamation point in Yahoo. We left it off. And when I suggested to my office mates at the Smithsonian that we adopt Slack, they thought I was joking. I'm glad we didn't adopt it, regardless of how useful it isd or isn't. Could you imagine President Eisenhower issuing a Tweet? (General Eisenhower once said, in response to a RAND Corporation report, "There will be no software in this man's army!"
Where did it all begin? Maybe from a programmer named Tom Pittman, author of Tiny Basic. He called his service "Itty Bitty Computers." This was around 1976 or so. Anyone have better information?
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