To commemorate April Fools’ Day I’ve attempted to have some enjoyable in this newsletter, including in the choice of reader mail and the quote of the day. Whatever’s true, though– no fooling.I’m amazed
by what the evolution of language tells us about economic advancement for many years. In focusing on language I’m admiring my incisive Opinion associate John McWhorter along with the excellent William Safire, who for several years composed the “On Language” column in The New York Times Magazine. The difference is I’ll try to stay connected to my primary topic, economics.Consider this coinage: meatspace. It refers simply to the physical world, where we have concrete bodies made of … meat.” Meatspace”is a word that didn’t require to exist until the innovation of cyberspace. Technological development offers us a brand-new perspective on things we when considered granted, in this case reality itself.”I.C.E. vehicle” (pronounced”ice “) is comparable. I.C.E. is brief for internal combustion engine, a modifier that was unnecessary up until electrical cars and trucks emerged. Like meatspace, it’s what the reporter Frank Mankiewicz called a “retronym “– a new term that’s developed for something old since the original term has actually ended up being uncertain, normally since of some advancement such as a technological advance.There are great deals of lists of retronyms on the web. Amongst my favorites, each exposing society’s development in some method or another: incandescent light bulb (required by fluorescent, LED, and so on);
landline phone; analog watch; Euclidean geometry; hard copy; vacuum tube radio(instead of transistor radio– although who bothers defining”transistor”radio anymore?). Unlike retronyms, “infrastructure”is an old word that keeps getting asked to do more work. It began as a term from French railway engineering referring to the layers of product that go below(“infra”)the tracks. Its significance broadened to consist of roads, bridges, sewage systems and power lines, and very just recently expanded again to consist of individuals, specifically caretakers, as in this fact sheet from the Biden White Home in 2015, which said, “The president’s strategy makes substantial investments in the infrastructure of our care economy, beginning by producing new and much better tasks for caregiving employees.”Our language maintains old methods of living as certainly as amber preserves long-dead insects or volcanic ash preserved ancient Pompeii. We still”cc:”people on emails although increasingly few people have actually ever made carbon copies on a typewriter (I have). We”copy and paste”
text, rarely conscious that actual aromatic paste utilized to be included. I just recently discovered that uppercase and lowercase letters got their names from real wooden cases of lead that were used by compositors for printing. People still discuss”dialing”telephone number even though phones do not have dials, and”rolling up” car windows although hand cranks are long gone.Along those lines, it’s fantastic that well into the 21st century we’re still describing the strength of our automobiles and trucks in comparison to the power of horses. That usage traces back to James Watt, the Scottish creator who developed a much better steam engine in the late 18th century and compared it to a horse, given that in those days horses and pulleys were used to lift containers of water out of flooded coal mines.Technology has actually leapt ahead since the 18th century however the English language hasn’t, at least when it comes to describing the power of engines. One horse power, by the way, equates to 746 watts– and yes, watt is named after James Watt.Not all technical terms has horsepower’s remaining power. In economics, for instance,”priming the pump “used to be a well-understood expression for what today we call stimulus. A conventional pump won’t work if there is air in the
pump or the line to it. You have to put water into it– to”prime” it– before you can get water out. In a period when individuals were more familiar with pumps, it made sense to them that the federal government would sometimes need to pour some money into the economy to get it
working and pump a lot more money out. That metaphor is less intuitively convincing these days.Flat-screen, high-definition color TVs are simply Televisions today. Ballpoint pens are simply pens. And soon, self-driving electrical vehicles will be just cars and trucks. Time and innovation march on.The readers write In reading your March 25 newsletter on the economist Clifford Winston, a follower in free enterprises, I thought about this old joke: An engineer and a financial expert are stuck in a deep hole in the ground. After a number of hours the engineer says,”I just can’t determine a method to get us out of here.” The economist turns to him and states,”It’s simple! First, presume a ladder …” Allan
Kemp Littleton, Colo.Quote of the day”Asking me now to compose on how I feel about economics journals is like asking a lamppost to compose a memoir on canines.”– Philip Mirowski, “The Uncomplicated Economy of Science?”( 2004) Have feedback? Send a note to [email protected].
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/opinion/language-technology-economics.html