fbpx

Archive for November 2010

What’s in a Name?

November 13, 2010 People, Uncategorized, Writing Comments Off on What’s in a Name?

So I have this google alert set up for my name.

Yeah okay, in another day and age it would likely be some kind of narcissistic self-stalker thing, but running a business, as I do now, knowing what shows up when potential partners or clients google me, knowing what, if anything, is being said about me or my company, these are all valuable bits of feedback to have. And the world is a big-ass place. The odds that my name is unique, or even that it will *remain* unique are small. Very very small.

Once upon a Time you used duplicates to show lineage. Thurston Howell the Third, King Henry the Eighth, using the same name over and over, generationally, kept a family name alive, added the new generations accomplishments to the former, built an empire.

Not so much nowadays. I’m wondering how this new, almost required presence in the virtual space, Individual names are power, getting your presence on the very top of the search lists is a valuable commodity. I am wondering if we are looking at a future where names will begin to get longer, maybe more specialized. Already the addition of a middle initial can make a difference in where your name appears, what about multiple names, more creative spellings? In China a few years ago there was a baby girl whose parents tried to have the @ symbol included in her name, simply because there were so many traditional names already overused (well that was the official explanation at any rate).

If you’ve tried to get a hotmail or flail or yahoo address recently, you already know how hard it is to find something that doesn’t require a half dozen numbers tagged onto the end, the same goes for online avatars like you have in City of Heroes or World of Warcraft.

In my love for dystopian scifi, I can see a future where names are territory, to be defended against encroachers against all costs, to be bought and sold like any other commodity.

Sent on the run from the Bushi-go dev iPhone.

Talk talk talking

November 5, 2010 Uncategorized Comments Off on Talk talk talking

I love listening to teenagers talk in languages not my own. I’m not talking about typical teenage slang, I’m talking about actual other languages, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish. There is a depth of expression that teens use in any culture, particularly when they are long, a greater range of inflection, they change their voices to mimic or mock. Their body language reflects the depth and breadth of what they are saying in a way that adults for the most part seem to have lost. Adults tend to use speech to convey information, they don’t seem to take as much joy in their voices as the young do, or perhaps they have already burned through that phase of existence and found it wanting. Sure, you might hear the occasion shout of joy at meeting a long lost friends, or a loud laugh here and there, but the manipulation is far far less. I have not heard, in my lifetime, more than a dozen different languages and dialects spoken, so i can’t really say if this is a
cultural issue, that grownups in general tend to become more efficient, to tone it down as they get older in some places in the world but not others.

Sent from the iPad I swiped from DrSpaus

« Older Entries