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That’s different. “Apple” is a very common everyday word, plus it’s arbitrary as a tech company name so the two are never confused in any reasonable context. “
by playpause 5y ago
That’s different. “Apple” is a very common everyday word, plus it’s arbitrary as a tech company name so the two are never confused in any reasonable context. “Meta” is a niche but useful word used in intellectual discussions, and Meta’s usage of it is relevant to its meaning. This means “meta” is far more under threat from Meta than “apple” was from Apple, because whenever someone describes something as “meta” in an ambiguous context (where they might be referring to the company or the concept), there will be a need for a little flow-interrupting clarification, and then people will just learn to use the word less (and thus the concept), because inconvenience is inconvenient.
It’s easy to dismiss concerns like this with “well another word will just appear in its place” but linguistic history will disagree with you. Sometimes we just lose things, and it’s sad.
- j245 5y agookay - so you’re concerned there is a high chance of collisions in this case as apposed to companies like Stripe, Amazon and Oracle where there is less scope for confusion. > Meta’s usage of it is relevant to its meaning. Is it though ? - I thought Meta the name is just a shorthand for Metaverse, so the confusion is bounded to discussions on that topic. Maybe I’m unable to see the issue. Can you give an example where this overloaded word will cause confusion ? We definitely need to have a conversation about the pro’s and con’s of various things associated with Meta and the metaverse. This name collision thing just feels like a non issue to me.
- playpause 5y agoI agree it’s not the most important issue regarding Meta, and I don’t think there’s anything useful that can be done about it now anyway, I just reject the outright dismissal of it as a complete non-issue. Yes, the company name Meta is relevant to the actual meaning of the prefix “meta-“, as in metaverse, a word coined in 90s sci-fi as a contraction of “meta-universe”, meaning a universe that is not the universe but is “beyond” or “about” it, which is a very reasonable use of the prefix when applied to a virtual world, in line with other uses like metadata (extra data that isn’t “the” data but is “about” it).