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I'm a big fan of Adafruit and the Pi, and I recently bought one of these "CyberDeck" add ons, but I'm annoyed that Adafruit chose to appropriate a generic term,
by rootbear 5y ago
I'm a big fan of Adafruit and the Pi, and I recently bought one of these "CyberDeck" add ons, but I'm annoyed that Adafruit chose to appropriate a generic term, cyberdeck, as the product name. This happens all the time, such as when IBM named their personal computer "The IBM Personal Computer" and what had once been a generic term became a specific product reference. Microsoft did this with "Windows", Intel did it with "Core", and more recently Musk did it with "Starship". Doing this muddies up the use of the generic term and can require extra effort to disambiguate (more so when speaking than in writing). I tend to see these choices as a mix of arrogance and a lack of imagination.
- moonbug 5y ago"cyberdeck" is a generic term? Is that you, Case?
- rootbear 5y agoSince William Gibson coined the term in Neuromancer, it has become a common, if ill-defined, word for some sort of portable computing device, especially in a cyberpunk context.
- akeck 5y agoThere's an existing community around the term. E.g., https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/ https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/
- dandelany 5y agoOk, but the product is called “Adafruit CYBERDECK HAT for Raspberry Pi 400”. It’s not really muddying the waters to call it “cyberdeck” for short when you’re writing an article about it...