Category: Four pillars

A few days ago, I posted something about The Becuase Effect (sic), referring people to Graham Barrow’s question in the Feedback column of the New Scientist. Graham was asking about the frequency of common misspellings, particularly typos, and in a comment on my post he mused about the way such words enter language, whether “becuase” could become an “internet” word.

And that in turn made me think about words or phrases that enter language as a result of an error.

Take the word “hoodlum”. I’ve read many suggested etymologies for the word, but the one I prefer is given below. Sadly, I have not been able to verify it online as yet, but I stand by it, it’s the best one I’ve come across :

Sometime in the second half of the 19th century, I think it was on the West Coast, there was a journalist in the US writing an article on  urban crime, and he wanted to refer to a particular unsavoury character named Muldoon. Not wanting to name the miscreant outright, for fear of immediate retribution, he wanted to try and disguise the name. The particular disguise he chose was a simple one; he wrote Mr Muldoon’s name backwards. So the article was meant to refer to Mr Noodlum. The typesetter could not read the journalist’s writing, and interpreted the “N” in noodlum as an H, so the name appeared throughout the article as Mr Hoodlum.

And everyone was happy, and the world gained a new word to describe an unsavoury character.

It’s not just words that enter the language as a result of an error. Sometimes it happens to the names used to describe city landmarks:

There’s a piece of apocrypha about the way a bridge in Madras got its name. Apparently it was called Hamilton Bridge to begin with; locals could not pronounce the name, so they rendered it “Ambattan” Bridge (dropping the aspirate and the “l” and adding a “b” after the “m”, all very believable). A visiting dignitary heard the bridge referred to as Ambattan Bridge, and asked what “Ambattan” meant. Coincidentally, “ambattan” meant “barber” in Tamil. The dignitary was having none of this vernacular nonsense, so he immediately decreed that the bridge be referred to as Barber’s Bridge.

I’ve never seen the “hoodlum” story rebutted, although alternative explanations have been given. As far as the Barber’s Bridge story is concerned, I have seen a number of articles suggesting that the etymology was suspect, given the dearth of suitably qualified Hamiltons in Madras history. The construction of the bridge seems to predate the existence of any Hamilton associated with the city; at least one suitable Hamilton has been found from a later date, but no Barber. I haven’t checked recently, but I believe Hamilton Bridge continues to exist today. From my viewpoint the etymology I suggest still seems possible, given the prodigious proclivity of planners in the sphere of name-changing. This post gives you some of the views.

I used to think I’ve been a foreigner all my life. My father was born in Calcutta. So was I. But we “came” from the south of India, we were Tamils; you could tell that from our names and, more particularly, our surnames; from the way we spoke; maybe even from our hair or our skin colour. Whatever the reason, a little part of me therefore thought I was a foreigner.

This, despite the fact that Calcutta has been fantastic to me, will always be a place of magic for me. Neither Calcutta, nor its Calcuttans, made me feel a foreigner; I made myself feel that way.

In the summer, for many years, my mother would take me and my siblings off to Tambaram, where her father lived (and taught Chemistry). And when I went there, I felt a foreigner. Even more of a foreigner than I felt in Calcutta. Way way more.

By the time I figured out what my grandmother was saying, that I wasn’t really a Dravidian but, instead, was descended from invading Aryans from a very long time ago, I felt a real full-blown whole-nine-yards foreigner.

So by the time I got to London, I was a foreigner indeed.

A foreigner at home. A foreigner away. A foreigner everywhere. Even if it was just a little bit of me feeling that way, it was there. And it gave me a different perspective. This perspective came into its own when I could afford to travel, and when I started seeing different cultures. I began to feel comfortable everywhere.

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to be able to visit over 50 countries, and felt at home in all of them. And I began to see that maybe I wasn’t a foreigner at all. I was a native. Everywhere. But particularly in places where I’ve spent real time. So I began to think of myself as a native of Calcutta, of Liverpool, of London, of Dublin, and of Windsor: the five places I’ve lived in.

The foreigner in me used to spot cultural differences fairly quickly, more as a defence mechanism than anything else. As the native in me grew older and displaced the foreigner, the defence mechanism became less necessary. And somewhere along the line I began to really enjoy looking at cultural differences, sensing the nuances, feeling the differences.

Which reminds me. Oh yes, the point of this post. Years ago, when I used to market and sell offshore software services, I tended to open sales pitches with a simple cultural point. I said “The English and the Indian cultures can sometimes be seen to be separated by something as thin as toilet paper. The Indians think the English are dirty, because they use toilet paper…..and after a pause, I gently moved on to how 5 star hotels in Dubai (are there any such things, or are they all six- or even seven-star?) learnt to operate between the east and the west. Cue the mini-shower-head on a hose by the loo seat. Enough said. Maybe TMI.

Cultures are strange things. Differences between cultures stranger still.

Which is why I found this post, using simple pictures to show the differences between Chinese and German cultures, really enjoyable. Do take a look, it’s wonderful. Thank you Adino; keep it up. I loved it.

Incidentally, I also really liked what Adino had to say in his About page:

Welcome friends, family and strangers to Adino Online. This is my very own space on the Internet.

“This is a blog for my family, friends and online friends in a journal format. I will update it at least five nights per week with articles like personal observations, photos, news and updates. I will not write about sensitive issues, politics, work, and gossip. I will not reveal any information that will endanger myself, my family, and my friends.”

I will usually post at night. If you have submitted any comments, please be patient until I approve them at night. Please be careful what you say in your comments. Don’t get me in trouble with our government ok?

One last thing, if you want any help setting up your own website or blog, I can help you in exchange for some consultancy fees

I hope you all visit often, and I hope to hear from you in the comments and through email.

I guess that’s one more reason I love the blogosphere. How I can learn about (and from) other cultures.

I try and spend time understanding each of the genres emerging over the last decade. If you want to understand the power of stop-motion animation and video, this one’s a good place to start. [I guess I liked it because it was in a library…]

If you haven’t seen it, definitely worth a look. Particularly if you want to try and understand even a smidgen of what it means to be Generation M/Y.  I could give you a more detailed assessment, but there’s a risk that I spoil it for you. It’s only about 4 minutes long anyway, so I’m going to leave well enough alone.

Linked here, and in my VodPod in the sidebar as well.

Let me know what you think.

Ever since Doc Searls discussed the concept with me maybe two years ago, I’ve been fascinated by VRM. Whenever I have an electronic relationship with someone who provides me with products or services, it becomes possible to capture the conversation and transaction flow in a persistent and shareable manner. But whose information is it? [This is not a rhetorical question, and is asked regardless of what the small print on the site may say].

Take me for example. I read a lot, I buy a lot of books. Firsthand, secondhand, flatsigned, signed to me, association copies, manuscripts, even incunabula. If I could share my Amazon history with Abebooks, I gain. If I could share my Abebooks history with Amazon, I gain. If I could share my Amazon and my Abebooks histories with Bonhams, I gain.

This is just a trivial example. The issue is simple. Is it my information? Even if I have to pay someone for the service they give me in capturing and maintaining the information, is it mine? Whose else can it be? Shouldn’t I be able to point it wherever I please?

My father, and his father before him, used to write a weekly column called Clive Street Gossip. The masthead had a Bard quote I’ve never been able to forget:

I must have liberty withal/ As large a charter as the Wind/ To blow on whom I please. 

Jaques, As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7

And I guess that’s the way I feel about my data. I want to be able to point it where I please.

That’s not all that VRM is about. If you’re interested in the subject, do visit the Project Home Page, I’ve linked to it earlier in this post, and again here for your convenience.

While on VRM, there are a couple of things I’ve noticed recently that fit well into this perspective. A BBC report gave me some details on something I’d heard about, but not seen much of. A project to develop a “universal” avatar, allowing a person to move seamlessly between virtual worlds. You can read the whole story here.

And that made me think. You have virtual money “isolated” in different virtual worlds; some of them have exchange rates to bring them into the physical world. Once you have a universal avatar, then you should be able to have universal cash and other attributes as well, with the market setting the rates of exchange.

I guess I felt a bit rueful as well…..why was I even thinking about universal avatars when we haven’t really sorted out universal sign-ons and passwords, universal registration capabilities, and so on. This is despite the sterling work that has been done in the OpenID-meets-SAML-meets-CardSpace-meets-microformats  space.

Talking about microformats. The first few people who got me on to microformats included some “A-List” bloggers: Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, Kevin Marks, Tantek Celik. In whose company I met Dave Morin (then of Apple, now of Facebook) and Brittany Bohnet (now of Google) for the first time, some years ago. And in that strange serendipitous way the  blogosphere works, I was reading something that Chris had posted the link for, visible on my Facebook news feed.

What Chris had linked to was this: Satisfaction: People Powered Customer Service.

Universal avatars. People Powered Customer Service. VRM is fast becoming like William Gibson’s future: already here, but unevenly distributed. Time to get that distribution more even.