Slashdot Mirror
Oxford Dictionary Does Science Fiction
Embedded Geek writes: "The News Log for Locus has an item about
the Oxford English Dictionary's attempt to capture unique words and phrases used in various fields. It has begun with a pilot site for science fiction. Specifically, they are looking for published uses of specific words in Science Fiction, SF Criticism, and SF Fandom.
The goal is not to create a glossary of terms but rather find the earliest (antedating), latest (postdating), and intermediate (interdating) uses of these words already in the dictionary in books, magazines, etc. They are soliciting help from the public in this effort. Presumably, if this effort is a success, they will begin working on other fields: other literature, programming, open source... who knows?"
No "grok"?
From the OED page:
This list is not meant to be a glossary of SF terminology: it is only a list of those terms that the OED has a particular need to have researched. Certain terms have been excluded from this list because we know beyond doubt that we have the earliest possible example, the circumstances of the coinage being known. These include dalek, robot, and grok. There is no need to point out the absence of these words.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Does this has anything to do with the current /. poll ? If so, should we expected to find CowboyNeal in the Oxford dictionary anytime soon ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Read the professor and the madman, it's a great read and will explain to you that this is the same process they used to collect all of the original words...
It was a joint collaboration very much like open-source software!
MIT has a class called 6.002 (circuits and electronics). During the first lecture I attended, the speaker is talking about the high and low voltage for a transistor. He's standing under a projected image of a transitor and spreads his arms wide. He says "I want you to grok this! It has got to meld with the essense of your being." Half the class groaned, the other half just looked utterly confused. Not a bad response, surpised me at any rate.
TANJ! Now the Mundanes are going to know what it is to FAFIATE and GAFIATE, to LOC and APAHACK...and finally, they will have to acknowledge that Fanzine came from SF Fandom!
FIAWOL!
Farrell McGovern
Concom CAN-CON (www.achilles.net/~cancon)
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I see cyberpunk made the list ...... great.
No if you don't mind, I think I'll continue webifying my infostructure, in order to monetize your desktop.
But with all the Science Fiction words and works out there ... I think there is already wo0rks such as this on the net that already ...
Ohh well I could be wrong.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I bet this turns out like The Futurological Congress. .feetback? Infoot and outfoot! I think we're getting somewhere. Feetality, twofootalitarianism." ."
"Onefoot, twofoot. Threefooter, fourfooted. Footing, footingly, footling. Footage, befootery. Footment. And footloose gets you footless, unfooted, defeeted. Ah, defeetism. Feetish, feetus. .
"But these words have no meaning!"
"At the moment, no, but they will. .
I'm torn. The OED is an extremely important resource for the English language, and having more people contribute can only be a good thing. Actually, the Oxford has a history of community contributions so the concept is not entirely new. Just the medium.
On the other hand, online access costs something like US$550/year for a private individual, which just seems a little excessive. It seems a little like getting open source coders to work on your closed source commercial project.
Yes, it is expensive to build and maintain something like the OED and they claim that they're not actually trying to make money, just cover their costs. Here's some numbers in an old Salon article:
http://www.salon.com/books/log/1999/09/08/oed/
I guess it just saddens me that access is so unaffordable, when the resource itself is so rich. Am I being unreasonable?
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
It only costs us $550/year per person to use the Oxford English Dictionary online...
"being slashdotted" or "karma whore" ? after all, /. is science-fiction, even it's a lot more fiction than science.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
So you mean a hacker is not one who makes things with an axe? Great, I'll have to go get a new one of these dictionary things...
Wheeeee
To me this seems to be a good case of an attempt to give credit where credit is due. Nothing like having the satisfaction that thousands, if not millions (or i guess billions) of people will now understand the origins of some of our vernacular.
This could come in handy for future generations as well...
An interesting insight to add to analyze within the context of the "Whorfian Hypothesis"
Having to do with studying how a language evolves, and becomes structured, even words that were 'made-up' have a bit of relevance to them. When a new word is formed it must have a base (to allow for proper edict realizations) or more specifically a history. That's sort-of how the Klingon Language got it's gears going; taking the words that were used (in context - disecting sentences) and applying the rules to form the rest of what has become Klingon. English (even bastardized American English [the sort I use]) follows the same sort of process.
I would guess that this new attempt of Oxford's will be even more revolutionary than many percieve at this time.
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
Copy of a message I sent the editor :) I can't believe they couldn't predate 1971 for AI (see Sci Fi Word List)
:) Next time I see him [JM], I'll mention it :)
Hi Mike,
Science predates Science Fiction
Winton
AI or Artificial Intelligence
Coined by John McCarthy [in a SCIENCE setting, not SCI-FI!], 1956. Seems to be fairly unanimous.... concept goes way back.
" He [JM] invited them to Vermont for "The Dartmouth summer research project on artificial intelligence." (reference)
1956 John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" as the topic of the Dartmouth Conference, the first conference devoted to the subject. (reference)
Just sent in a canonical reference for Clarke's Laws, as propounded by Clarke himself.
Of course, it's not the earliest cite, but if anyone has a pre-1972 cite, feel free to send it in.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Assuming(as was stated) that these boys are planning to eventually get into the tech field. I wonder if anyone has pointed them in the direction of the yet.
I mean besides being a good read, there is some pretty useful information in there from a linguistic point of view.
lysergically yours
Let's just hope their none too vindictive
The Slashdot Effect: (phrase, colloq.) The process by which a server is brought down causing hardworking Oxford dictionary staff to lose many, many invaluable hours of work and research. (see: assholes)
:)
You must be kidding me. The Empire Strikes Back (episode 5 for all the kiddies) was released in 1980, and I know for a fact that the term 'asteroid field' was used in this movie. If this turns out to be the first use of this... well, it's rather freaky, don't you think? I'm as big a SW fan as anyone, but I never considered it anywhere near hard scifi!
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
You do get what you pay for though: M-W has a lot of non-standard definitions, some of which are holdovers from the time when it was fashionable to smuggle connotations into definitions that had more to do with the compiler's political and religious beliefs than had to do with the words. Oxford has for the most part purged itself of such things, as well as being MUCH more extensive about documenting all sorts of different meangins and even their origins, which is why it is the preferred source. However, regular users (like me) aren't apt to encounter the differences.
The one area where science fiction has influence on Anglophone society at large (i.e. not just geeks) is the constant introduction of idioms into general usage. People who make their living tracking the evolution of the English language do need to keep an eye on science fiction.
"hoop" = (verb) To destroy or break, to be rendered useless, also used commonly in the past tense (ie. This car is hooped.)
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I was surprised that Asimov's three laws of robotics were not included in the list. They had such an impact on future s-f stories about robots or A.I.
Dan Simmons even coined the word asimotif (quote from the french edition) in his book "Endymion".
For those who have never heard of these laws, here they are :
The 1940 Laws of Robotics
First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
If you want to see how Asimov dealt with these, I suggest reading "I, Robot", a little old but still interesting.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
"fina" "Unconveinent" and "referance"!
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
That would be because the 3 laws of robotics don't actually contain any new words, just a bunch of ones the OED already has.
I also thought that but the list contains Clarke laws and Sturgeon law, that's what motivated my post.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
I think what's more important than the fact that they're compiling Sci-Fi definitions is that they're looking at the origins.
This is really what makes the OED so much better than any other dictionary. As a student of classical languages I can't express how enough how annyoing it is to hear someone incorrectly use a word they got out of the thesaurus . I think the OED is sort of the anti-thesaurus, really.
Now I'm not a huge Sci-Fi geek, (Except for quoting the Star Wars movies at appropriate times in conversation.) but I'm sure they feel the same way when people talk about the "Vulcan face-grab".
2. "Bioroid" (That's a gimme.)
3. Carla Speed McNeil
-Prime Commonalities? Definitions/explanations? If you can do it without a search engine, you win a thousand points, and prove yourself worthy of this site.
-Fantastic Lad
It's the real thing, too!
Grit your teeth and (gag) join the Quality Paperback Book Club (http://www.qpb.com). Once the dust settles, you get free online access to the OED, as long as you buy a book every six months.
I hate book clubs, but this works for me.
Oh, this Beta, it is not so good.
...haven't these folks been to Everything2 yet?
Spotted a few immediately obvious omissions: conapt, leady, kipple, etc.
For the uninitiated, "frel" is an expletive used on Farscape.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Hey stupid moderator, I really did set up the machine. Go ahead, email ben@jessesword.com and I'll email you back.
#$%&.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
He discussed his research, which involved review countless junk mail, spam, advertisements, corporate memos, etc. The book is broken down into type of language like Distraction Modifiers, Self-Help Jargon, Second Hand English, and Invisible Diminishers. For the latter, he cited an example being "only $99.95!" as if this is a low amount.
He also has some excerpts listed on the site above that are very intersting.
The thesis of his book seems to be that we are slowly degrading the English language, especially with our culture of hype. But I look at it from the Open Source perspective! If it doesn't work for you, add something to it or change some meaning... if others accept the change, then you've made a valuable contribution. If not, then you still have your own little version, only not every one will understand what you're saying. Now that's crunk!
I look forward to seeing the "end result" of new Oxford Dictionary! I really want a definitive definition for hydrospanner (isn't it a bridge?).
Cheers!
Carl
Ha, I was convinced you were trolling.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
That Gharlane of Eddore passed away this summer. He would've known just about everything of importance to this porject.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Asimov is officially credited with coining the term "robotics". I believe that's already in Oxford, though.
Robot, of course, was something he took from some old Russian SF writer, can't remember the name...
In addition to these, Asimov was a brilliant scientist and an amazing writer, and not merely of SF, but of all sorts of intriguing stuff. Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein together probably had as much influence on the course of SF as did the founders of SF, ie. Verne and Wells. ^_^
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
They are looking for instances of 'AI', not 'artificial intelligence'.
I thought that might be the case, but as others pointed out, it costs $350/pa to use the OED on-line, so I couldn't check whether they already had Artificial Intelligence expanded upon.
I've passed it on to JMC to see if he remembers the origin of the abbreviation.
Cheers,
Winton
Hi Mike,
/.
a rtmouth.html
m ou th/dartmouth.html
Following on our thread, X-posted to
If you need the original hardcopy I guess
it could be obtained from Rockefeller or
maybe the NYker? JMC himself might have
a copy in his files (I don't know his current
Secretary at the moment, and don't want to bother
him again.
Cheers,
Winton
FORWARD FROM John McCarthy:
The proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation, in my files as
href=http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/d
(and in HTML form)
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dart
for the summer project on artificial intelligence was August 1955.
Since they supported it, it would have been in their list of grants in
1955 or 1956. The New Yorker picked it up, perhaps from the list of
grants, and one of their bottom-of-the-column wisecracks said
something like "about time". That may be 1956 but could be later.
Notice something wrong there?
Sorry, no, I don't notice something wrong they're!