Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!aecom2!safern
From: safern@aecom2.UUCP (Eric Safern)
Newsgroups: soc.misc
Subject: Re: Re: Down with engineerlish!
Message-ID: <219@aecom2.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 2-Oct-86 13:58:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: aecom2.219
Posted: Thu Oct  2 13:58:56 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Oct-86 05:35:56 EDT
References: <741@scc.UUCP> <6128@alice.uUCp>
Organization: Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Yeshiva University
Lines: 27

> > You're right, there is no such word in the English language as "functionality".
> > But what's wrong with using the correct term - function?  This industry has
> > taken the English language and twisted it for it's own purposes.  If you think
> > that functionality is weird, then listen to a new one I heard the other day,
> > "productization".  Apparently this is being used to describe the process of
> > a product going the developing stages to market.
> 
> Real easy: "function" and "functionality" mean two different things.
> 
> A thing's function is its purpose.  Its functionality is the collection
> of things it is capable of doing.

	I spent this summer working at Bell Labs in Holmdel.  Each person
there must have used the word "functionality" at least twice a day (ok, I'm
exaggerating a little).   Last week I was reading the latest issue of The
Scientific American, and in an article on materials in communication the
author used and defined "functionality".  I said to myself, this man must
work at Bell Labs.  Sure enough, he is the vice president of Network Systems
for the Labs.  I think it's a pretty good word - he defined functionality as
the power of it's functions.  In other words, if an object does something,
it has function.  If it does something ***well***, it has functionality.
For example, both copper wire and fiber optics have roughly equivelent
functions, but the fiber has greater functionality (at least in some
applications).
-- 
  Eric Safern
  ...{ihnp4,rocky2,philabs,esquire,cucard,pegasus}!aecom!aecom2!safern