On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 10:21 AM, William Pietri
<william(a)scissor.com>wrote;wrote:
That did cross my mind, and it was tempting. But
practically, many busy
journalists, causal readers, and novice editors may base a lot of their
initial reaction on the name alone, or on related language in the
interface. By choosing an arbitrary name, some fraction of people will
dig deeper, but another fraction will just retain their perplexity
and/or alienation.
This is a really good point, and brings up another point for everyone to
consider. If the name is not *immediately* evocative of something to the
casual reader, it might as well be called the "Hyperion Frobnosticating
Endoswitch". It will be a blank slate as far as journalists and the world
at large is concerned. I think we're better off with a term that gets us in
the ballpark with little or no mental energy than we are picking something
that has clinical precision, but takes more than a few milliseconds of
consideration to get the the gist.