Posted by
Andrews on Wednesday, June 04, 2008 10:30:36 AM
Is anyone else annoyed by the tendency in computer software to show a lot of false erudition?
For example, the meaningless use of mythological names for things, either because they "seem to fit", or because they sound "cool"? For example, there is something called Yggdrasil, which is the world tree of Norse mythology, specifically in its capacity as the tree from which Odin hanged himself to learn the secret of runes. So, what is Yggdrasil? It is one of many releases of the Linux operating system. What does that have to do with the name? It is as if I named a frying pan "Saint Dymphna" or "Rocky Marciano". What does either have to do with frying?
But developers love to show off their grasp of obscure mythology. From Norse myths to Mayan deities there is not one religious tradition which has not been mined for "cool" names. And not just mythology, but historical figures as well. For example, what does a wireless data connection have to do with a king of the Danes? (Harald Bluetooth, bet you wondered where that silly name came from, didn't you?) Can I expect my next power cord to be called Charlemagne and will I eventually entrust my data backup to Otto von Bismarck?
I know there is nothing exciting about practical names such as "wordpad", and the silly marketing words that mean nothing, such as "Camry" and "Altira", are annoying as well, but the mock classicism
1 is worse. Especially when picked for the "cool" sound alone. If I hear a name from mythology, I expect the product to have at least some tangential relation to the attributes of that entity. In the past that was the case, but software seems to have broken with that trend and just started picking names at random
2. After all, at least Ajax was chosen for strength and tenacity, and Mercury for speed. Past products used classical names as a shorthand, not just because they liked the sound. But that is because in the past, apparently, those assigning names assumed people had some knowledge of mythology. Today it appears they think, perhaps rightly, that mythological names are meaningless to most people.
Unfortunately they aren't. And it only confuses those who do still attach meaning to those names.
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1. I realize "classicism" really only refers to Greek and Roman matters, perhaps Hebrew, but I lack a better catch all term to include world mythology. I am sure there is one, but it eludes me at the moment.
2. Because we imported "chrono-" as a prefix relating to time, Chronos (now usually spelled Kronos,
I don't know why) does happen to be used correctly more than most names. Chronos was the titan father of the Greek deities, the Roman Saturn. He was in some respects the classical version of "father time".