I've been joking lately that there is a new one syllable word for "personal computer": phone. At the current rate that's how the language will shift. I suppose we'll know if people start referring to things like "macOS deskphones" and think "laptop" always meant "laptop phone". :)
It's like those futurist ads from the 50s (and 80s/90s) AT&T that soon there will be phones capable of amazing things everywhere in our lives, except they aren't all AT&T branded and most of them started with the name "personal computer". (Though savor the irony that Ma Bell's legacy lives on in Linux by way of Bell Labs' contributions to Unix.)
Then again, I'm also strongly for renaming 3D Printers to facsimile machines because the word fax is too useful to lose to ancient toner-based modem printers.
Mobile phones are called "Handys" in German. It's become such a satisfying and appropriate name for handheld computers, as distinct from traditional personal computers.
In British English, they've always called cellphones "mobiles", which is also a nice short name for mobile computers.
That's not too well known in American slang, in my experience. I'd never heard that usage before now. Edit -- lots of people here recognize that usage, so I guess I'm just sheltered. Regardless, I hear 'handy' used in the US as an adjective meaning convenient quite often.
But, if so, it's like the reverse of Americans talking about their "fanny pack" while in England.
> But, if so, it's like the reverse of Americans talking about their "fanny pack" while in England.
There was a (funny) local news story in Australia when comedian Will Ferrell accidentally made an off-color "fanny" joke not knowing what the word meant abroad. Shows how slight differences in the same language can mean worlds of difference.
I think everyone here calls them cellphones. I call them mobiles and everyone gets it. Handy... wouldn't work in Canada, and I suspect not in the U.S. either.
Handy (CA, US etc) == handjob (GB etc). Presumably handy is an abbreviation of handjob. I know blowjob is in common parlance at least on both sides of the pond. Perhaps it is just as well DE didn't pick blowey or blowie (those are in use over here in a similar way to handy on the left edge of the pond.)
Handy could work in the UK except that it is extensively used already as an adjective eg: "that's a bit handy" or "you'll find this handy" etc. "That's a handy handy" would be a bit weird and as we already have mobile then there is no need for it. I suspect that "cell" will creep in eventually but not yet.
A mildly interesting dovetail to all that is that a vernacular for phone used to be "the blower". I suspect through comparison of early phones with [ships] communication voice-pipes.
Good catch - "blower". I still use that term myself and so do several others in my acquaintance. Even kids understand what I mean so it is definitely embedded in the national conscience here still or at least they get the idea by reference and context.
Without any research whatsoever I'll also venture that "blowing" is what people used to do when they had to rush downstairs to answer the new fangled telephonic device and ended up out of breath. However, again without research, there is a good chance that the RN and co would have referred to the voice tubes on ships as "blowers" because that is the sort of word they would pick. I know a lot of modern matelots and that theory fits nicely.
In Argentina is "el celular" as in "teléfono celular", or sometimes like in Spain "el móvil" which I like better because it means "the mobile", which in the long term could mean "the mobile computer".
I think this usage is dying out in British English in much the same way as the word "auto" for car. People still speak of "mobile networks" and "auto dealerships", but they buy "phones" and "cars".
Maybe this is a regional thing, but I'm British and I'm not sure I've ever heard a first language British English speaker use the word "auto" for a car. I'd have said that was purely an Americanism.
I concur - native en_GB speaker here. Auto(mobile) is probably avoided as a general synonym for car because we use "automatic" to differentiate from the default "manual" AKA "stick-shift".
Having said that, this is probably only modern usage. The AA (Automobile Association) and RAC (Royal Automobile Club) both feature "automobile" in their names and are both well over 100 years old.
I suppose (without doing any research) car is probably short for carriage.
I think you're right. I am dual nationality US/UK so sometimes I tend to cross my metaphors. Perhaps a better, British example would be the word "motor" instead of "auto". Used in words like "motorway", but I've never heard anyone actually use it to mean "car" outside of 80s cockney rap.
Nah, still pretty widely used in certain circles - even to the extent that you can have a car sales site called motors and it be obvious: http://www.motors.co.uk/
I've most commonly heard motor as referring to an engine (UK english). I'd say a good example might be from french, with the formal and correct "voiture" not commonly being used, with the less formal "bagnole" being much more common.
I'm a native speaker of American English (California dialect) and I have never heard another native speaker use "auto" for a car except in the context of "auto dealership".
I think you misinterpreted the point. As I read it, "car" and "phone" are the terms Americans (and others) use, and that the British sometimes used "auto" and "mobile" but that usage is dying out (which doesn't conflict with you not having heard it).
As an American, "car" and "phone" are definitely the norm. The only time I've ever heard "mobile" is as a prefix to phone, so "mobile phone". It's sometimes used on forms to distinguish between home, work and mobile numbers (like I just did).
I'm pretty sure this will Baader-Meinhoff it into recognition for you. It's in the A1 level vocab, and I would see it on signs outside of Spätis and phone stores on a daily basis.
In the U.K. I'd say it's mobile and phone pretty much interchangeably (possibly more phone than mobile nowadays as proposed by ancestor comment). If anyone says cell phone then you can immediately spot that they're american.
I like how minicomputer used to mean "computer that's only as big as a chest freezer." Every now and then I hear laypeople use the term "mini-computer" to mean a computer that's really small by their standards, like a raspberry Pi.
In Swedish, the term "stordator", literally "big computer" refers to a mainframe.
I really like your idea of nano and picocomputers. It's consistent, and really reflects on the miniaturisation that we have seen since since the invention of the computer.
Since "computer" pre-dates digital, it might be a good time to come up with a more apt base term too. It's not as if most people's usage of them (at least as far as they know!) is performing arithmetic.
Ever seen a two year old use a tablet? Don't be shocked if in ten to twelve years we have teenagers who can only use a touch interface and can't type or hate using a mouse.
That is exactly my grandchildren. My grandson is four and has been using smartphones for three years. He's had his own for one. Color me shocked when, at three, he asked me to connect his phone to my wifi. They're bright enough kids but far from exceptional/genius. Its just how it is now.
By the way, when you make the off/end button big and red, it is nigh impossible to convince a little boy not to press it. Over and over.
I recently caught myself holding my finger on a paper book and waiting for the translation dialog to pop up. Guess too much time spent reading on a Kindle.
I was about to comment, it is very annoying to write on a tablet for any kind of school length work. I would hate to write an essay on a tablet.
Then I realized I have installed Dragon on this computer, and there wasn't even a reason for me to type this reply. So I will risk a guess and assume that in the future essays will be spoken, not written. No doubt there will be an epic fight over this, as people try to defend why children of the future will have to learn to type. I will hazard one more prediction: they will lose.
> In a fast-paced live demo, I will create a small system using Python, plus a few other languages for good measure, and deploy it without touching the keyboard. The demo gods will make a scheduled appearance. I hope to convince you that voice recognition is no longer a crutch for the disabled or limited to plain prose. It's now a highly effective tool that could benefit all programmers.
Turns out it's doable, you just need to invent your own language.
You're assuming writing is a highly linear process, which has pretty much never been the case. When dictating memos was a thing, even that took practice. Anything more complex has always involved huge amounts of cutting and pasting--whether literally or digitally.
Given good enough voice recognition and good enough touch interfaces that work in concert (and ignoring the many situations where speaking is an issue), it's possible. But it's not an easy path.
Interesting - especially the using the mouse/trackpad part. They're going to want pro tablets. Some of those two year olds of yore are now seven - and elementary schools in the U.S. are still very tablet focused. It'll be interesting to see what happens in four or so years when they start middle school and are expected to use traditional laptops.
> Then again, I'm also strongly for renaming 3D Printers to facsimile machines because the word fax is too useful to lose to ancient toner-based modem printers.
Then maybe we really will be able to "receive a fax at the beach"[1] in the future!
It's not a strong requirement in my mind, but again I'm posturing that the original term fax was far too explicitly framed when it is more useful as a very generic term.
That said, it sucks as a hand terminal, because everything it does everything through vendor-locked, cloud-enabled shitty apps with almost no interoperability. If this is how future of computing is going to look, then I'm sorely disappointed.
What sort of interoperability are you lacking? I have apps on my phone that can view or edit most of the file formats I use regularly, and transferring files is easy enough (with or without a network connection). The apps are not as full featured as the equivalent desktop program, but I don't need them to be.
In the early 2000s I was excited about the potential of networked handhelds. Then disappointed when it turned out they'd be phones. I wonder if there's some branch of the wave function where an open PC-style architecture won.
Not sure if having the public consciousness think of these devices differently would help to stop the gross freedom violations they impose. Even traditional IBM PCs are trending towards draconian lockdown to one OS with an extraordinary amount of proprietary code run in firmware and even in the CPU itself, much like how cellular modems (and SSD controllers) work.
It is more that the broad userbase doesn't care, and there isn't enough "putting money where your mouth is" to get good economies of scale on freedom respecting computer hardware, regardless of form factor.
So the lockdown of "phones" is more a symptom of broad technological illiteracy rather than a cause.
I carry a small personal computer with a data-only cell-tower connection, that sometimes receives voice calls by talking to an SIP server over the Internet, which I pay for separately to my cell service. At this point, the "phone" is more the SIP app itself than the device it's on.
For me, the feature that keeps it in my pocket every day, versus being able to ditch it when I feel like being in the real world, is the phone part. If it was just a PDA I'd leave it at home most of the time.
