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From: madsax@milton.u.washington.edu (Mark A. DeLoura)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: We Need A New Name
Message-ID: <15591@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 31 Jan 91 19:53:34 GMT
References: <15454@milton.u.washington.edu>
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Lance Norskog writes in article <15454@milton.u.washington.edu>:
>
>We need a new terminology for this new technology we're building.
>
>The William Gibson vocabulary of "deck" and "cyberspace" have been
>swiped by Autodesk.  

It seems like most common household objects get their name shortened
to one or two syllables...phone for telephone, fridge for
reFRIDGErator (contrary to what someone else said. :) ), tee-vee for
television...etc.

I'll wager that even though Autodesk has swiped the term "deck", if VR
systems ever do get into households, that is what they will be termed--
simply due to William Gibson's novels.  It doesn't really matter what
they are called by the scientific community-- people will call them
what is easiest to remember them by.  And reading through a William
Gibson novel and seeing the word "deck" to refer to that "XYZFOO"
thing that you have in the living room probably will cause it to be
termed that instead.  It's so smooth, easy to say. :)  And William
Gibson will probably be raised to a cult status even higher than he is
now.

===============================================================================
Mark A. DeLoura    madsax@milton.u.washington.edu      University of Washington
 "The hardest part of Virtual Reality is the last few inches." -- Tom Furness