A cautionary tale of language from Ted Nelson:
We might call a common or garden spade–
- A personalized earth-moving equipment module
- A mineralogical mini-transport
- A personalized strategic tellurian command and control module
- An air-to-ground interface contour adjustment probe
- A leveraged tactile-feedback geomass delivery system
- A man-machine energy-to-structure converter
- A one-to-one individualized geophysical restructurizer
- A portable unitized earth-work synthesis system
- An entrenching tool
- A zero-sum dirt level adjuster
- A feedback-oriented contour management probe and digging system
- A gradient disequilibrator
- A mass distribution negentroprizer
- (hey!) a dig-it-all system
- An extra terrestrial transport mechanism
Spades, not words, should be used for shoveling. But words should help us unearth the truth.
–Computer Lib (1974), Theodor Nelson, p44
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