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THE WORDLAB WORDLETTER Episode 4
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Friday, November 12, 1999 http://www.wordlab.com
Our ultra groovy new project is getting close to launch.
The next Episode of the WordLetter will probably spill
the beans.
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Have you been to WordLab's WordBoard lately? An
increasing number of large companies, small businesses,
and savvy individuals are using it as a resource for
their naming and sloganeering projects. Here are some
of the more unusual recent pleas for assistance posted
there: a new slogan for an annual gathering called
Lardfest; a cool name for a new pet parrot; a catchy
slogan for a Human Resource Department (Get Back To Your
Cubicle!); a name for a Sex Toy company; a name for a
new soft drink; a catchy name or phrase to describe a
guy who is trying to kill his boss (we're not liable!);
a for a Nostalgia Business (they just don't make those
the way they used to); a name for a new hockey arena; a
name for a group of church projectionists; a name for
an upscale limousine service; a name for gourmet dog
biscuit company; a name for a new glass-based composite
material; a name for a cosmetic and skin care line (Wax
and Wane?); slogans for a Pakistani Travel Agency (they
're going to need some really good ones these days); a
good name for a regional waste exchange company dealing
primarily with solid waste (a particularly fun project);
names for two new Super Heroes; a slogan for a college
dance marathon; a name for a business that offers
theraputic body massage accompanied by the music
of Black Sabbath (easy VC funding for that company!);
a slogan to promote a pepper spray product; a pun on
the element cadmium for a science project (I mean
silence project); ond a slowgun for a resueme covert
litter reloitering to speach pithology.
How much do we charge for our excellent consulting
advice? Nuthin', Nada, Zippo! It's 100% FREE, and we
are the only ones doing this (to our knowledge). And
you're all invited to weigh in as well - on the
WordBoard.
Scare the ad agencies - tell a friend about WordLab
today!
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WordLab received its most thorough review to date
recently from Third Age:
What's In a Name?
What's in a name? Plenty, if it came from WordLab, a
site declaring it does not swim in the mainstream to
create unique and unusual names. Have pun with
WordLab's "halfvast stash" of stuff in 40 categories
such as TV Series (Aurora Boring Alice), Romance Novels
(Moon Over Nowhere), Ice Cream Flavors (Bleached Peach),
Horror Movies (It Won't Hurt a Bit) and Pets (Archibald
Spot). WordLab says name a magazine for shady car
dealers such as "Bait & Switch," adopt the political
slogans "Beat Around This Bush" or name a perfume
"Repudiate." Someday you may see a movie called
"Revenge of the Administrative Assistants" or live in a
retirement community named "Heaven Lite." The two
acronymcompoops (their word) who fished all these
creations from their "primordial amygdala pond" call
themselves Quark and Snark. Obviously they put a lot of
effort into WordLab, but charge only an Alm and a Lug
to use it.
And now, on with the snow.
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SURFING THE NOOSPHERE
or, More Tangents than High School Geometry Class
A WordBoard posting by Jad in the "HELP I need a name
for a Creative Agency" thread offered simply
"noosphere." This got my attention. I made a little
reply on the WordBoard, but my juices were flowing, and
a new WordLetter Episode was born. This one's got a lot
of quoted material, less meat from myself, but hey,
there are no rules here, and my head is spinning a
little too much this month anyway to actually write
something very original. So here goes.(Oh, and I beg
your pardon in advance for the tsunami of parenthesis
that is about to overtake your quiet coastal word
village - a little idiosyncrasy of mine about to go
wildly, pathologically (yeah right - get on with it,
will ya?!) out of control).
My chizzly little Webster's and dictionary.com both
drew a blank when I looked up "Noosphere." Fortunately,
we have this little thing called the Internet, which
once and awhile can actually be a decent research tool.
First we have Encyclopedia Britannica, who's Web site
only gives the first few lines of a definition for free
to those cheapskates like me who don't want to buy the
whole taco. (They recently made a Big Noise about going
to a free model, but it looks like the same old
subscription service to me). Here's what they have to
say about the Noosphere:
noösphere
"(from Greek noös, 'mind'), in theoretical biology,
that part of the world of life that is strongly
affected by man's conceptual thought; regarded by some
as coextensive with the anthroposphere. The noösphere,
as proposed by scientific theorists Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin, Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky, and... "
http://www.eb.com/bol/search?type=topic&query=noosphere
&DBase=Articles
The key words here, it turns out, are "Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin" (1881-1955). This story is really about
him, a "Jesuit paleontologist/philosopher" who may very
well have invented the Internet conceptually a good 50
years before you got your first AOL floppy in your
morning Cheerios. Eric Raymond, whose "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar" analysis of Linux and the open source
software movement prompted Netscape to decide to give
away its source code (TV drama version title: "Too
Little, Too Late"), wrote a follow-up essay available
online called "Homesteading the Noosphere." A detailed
and descriptive analysis of hacker culture and
methodology, I was able on my admittedly hurried skim
to glean the following from the glossary he provides:
"[N] The term 'noosphere' is an obscure term of art in
philosophy It is pronounced KNOW-uh-sfeer (two
o-sounds, one long and stressed, one short and
unstressed tending towards schwa). If one is being
excruciatingly correct about one's orthography, it is
properly spelled with a dieresis over the second 'o'.
"In more detail, this term for 'the sphere of human
thought' derives from the Greek 'nous' meaning 'mind',
'spirit', or 'breath'. It was invented by E. LeRoy in
Les origines humaines et l'evolution de l'intelligence
(Paris 1928). It was popularized first by the Russian
biologist and pioneering ecologist Vladimir Ivanovich
Vernadsky, (1863-1945), then by the Jesuit
paleontologist/philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(1881-1955). It is with de Chardin's theory of future
human evolution to a form of pure mind culminating in
union with the Godhead that the term is now primarily
associated."
- Eric S. Raymond, April 1998
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homest
eading.html
".pure mind culminating in union with the Godhead,"
i.e. Yahoo en flagrante with Cisco Systems. So who was
Mr. Chardin, and what exactly did he mean by this funny
word? Perhaps he just meant "Noose Pierre," and had a
paranoid persecution complex. Read on, intrepid
readers.
Nootech (you knew that was coming next, didn't you? We'
re all related in one big Web of Being, and the next
thread just had to lead to commerce - as usual)
triumphantly proclaims, "The noosphere is here!"
(Though perhaps they really meant "No OSP here!" Only
Special Persons will understand this.):
"The noosphere is here!
Noosphere is a construct of Teilhard de Chardin who, in
the 1950s hypothesized an evolutionary process which
included the noosphere as the next level up from the
biosphere. While Chardin's focus was theological, we
maintain that he was correct in his general theory that
the planet would develop a consciousness beyond one
person. If you think about it, the noosphere is here,
in its infancy. It is the web. As more people go
on-line we come ever closer to achieving a genuine
global consciousness."
http://www.nootech.com/noosphere.html
Here are some of Pierre's own words on the subject
(apparently he had many):
"No one can deny that a network (a world network) of
economic and psychic affiliations is being woven at
ever increasing speed which envelops and constantly
penetrates more deeply within each of us. With every
day that passes it becomes a little more impossible for
us to act or think otherwise than collectively."
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Formation of the
Noosphere, 1947
And, from "Proximal and Distal Unity," Pierre is
quoted:
"No one would dare to picture to himself what the
noosphere will be like in its final guise, no one, that
is, who has glimpsed however faintly the incredible
potential of unexpectedness accumulated in the spirit
of the earth. The end of the world defies imagination.
But if it would be absurd to try to describe it, we may
none the less - by making use of the lines of approach
already laid down - to some extent foresee the
significance and circumscribe the forms."
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - The Phenomenon of Man
http://www.hyperreal.org/~mpesce/pdu.html
One little Web site only coughed-up this tidbit, but it
added a crucial detail to the fantasy growing like
poison sumac among my mindcables -
"Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was an
paleontologist and Catholic priest who also served as a
stretcher bearer in WWI."
http://www.smartlink.net/~joepro/caption.html
- which means that, though French, as a stretcher
bearer in WWI he could have born casualties to
ambulances driven by the American writer Ernest
Hemingway. I'm not sure what this means, if anything -
Jake Barnes zooming forward through time to buy Viagra
online? - I'm only trying to start a rumor based on
unfounded speculation. Any takers? (Ain't this World
Wide Noosphere great?!)
When a magazine comes along with a delightfully
charming little title like "Computer-Mediated
Communication Magazine," often abbreviated God knows
why to "CMC Magazine," it's a crying shame that it goes
under in less than five years (from May 1994 to January
1999). [Incidentally and off-track once more, the title
of this Mag inspired a recent WordLab buzzword entry,
"Computer Assisted Suicide," which some of you hardy
souls still reading may now be contemplating. Don't do
it! This gets better ("sure, but how do you define
'better?'" )]. CMC Magazine was known the world over
for reporting "about people, events, technology,
public policy, culture, practices, study, and
applications related to human communication and
interaction in online environments." Whew. Which means
that, sooner or later - March 1997, to be exact - they
tripped into the Noosphere, led by a Reverend, no less:
Teilhard de Chardin and the Noosphere
by Rev. Phillip J. Cunningham, C.S.P.
"In 1925, Teilhard wrote in an essay entitled
Hominization: 'And this amounts to imagining, in one
way or another, above the animal biosphere a human
sphere, a sphere of reflection, of conscious invention,
of conscious souls (the noosphere, if you will)' (1966,
p. 63) It was a neologism employing the Greek word noos
for 'mind.'
"Crucial to the process of human evolution, i.e. to
progress is, in Teilhard's view, scientific research.
In the past such investigations were isolated,
sometimes no more than the hobbies of individuals.
'Today we find the reverse: research students are
numbered in the hundreds of thousands-soon to be
millions-and they are no longer distributed
superficially and at random over the globe, but are
functionally linked together in a vast organic system
that will remain in the future indispensable to the
life of the community.' (p.106) One can't but think of
today's 'Internet,' yet this was written forty-six
years ago."
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1997/mar/cunning.html
A good article in Wired Magazine way back in June
1995 - "A Globe, Clothing Itself with a Brain" -
reported:
"An obscure Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
set down the philosophical framework for planetary,
Net-based consciousness 50 years ago."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/teilhard.html
I know you could go on like this forever, but I for one
can't take it any more. For those of you who remain
noospherically insatiable, here's a good site for more
links and information:
NOOSPHERE -The Expanding Web of Consciousness
http://www.technoetic.com/noosphere/
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WordLab - http://www.wordlab.com Inverting the English
Language
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