He popularized the term, although it is not clear to me that he was the first to utter it. The concept had been floating around since at least the mid-1930s in the form of mechanically augmenting thinking. based on what I read in the 1930s and 1940s, I would give him--or his book editor--credit for the phrase. This is similar to the problem we still have with the word automation. It was in use at Ford Motors in the late 1940s but nobody knew about it or used the phrase until John Diebold did when he used it as the title for a best selling book published in the early 1950s. He told me that he had gotten the word from Ford and his editor encouraged him to use in the title of the book. The only really clever book title he ever came up with for his 7+ books. His experience is what taught me to spend a lot of time thinking about the title of any book you publish, fighting and dialoguing with editors, marketing people, and others until you get it right.

Jim (James) W. Cortada
IBM Institute for Business Value
3001 West Beltline Highway
Madison, WI 53713 USA
jwcorta@us.ibm.com
608-270-4462

"Evan Koblentz" ---01/31/2009 04:20:10 AM---Was the term "Giant Brains" already popular when Edmund Berkeley used it in his 1949 book title, or should he get credit for po

From:	"Evan Koblentz" <evan@snarc.net>
To:	<members@sigcis.org>
Date:	01/31/09 04:20 AM
Subject:	[SIGCIS-Members] Another question - "Giant Brains"