Douglas Adams (in 1999 no less):

[T]he reason we suddenly need such a word [as “interactivity”] is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport—the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.

As Eno pointed out, by naming something you say, “this is now real.” We can define something just as much by what is than we can by what is not. Unhappiness, for instance, teaches us invaluable lessons about happiness. When, then, will “wireless” become extinct?

[This and this via]

Innoventions

David Rakoff takes on the Disney Innoventions Dream House:

[C]an we pause for a moment to talk about that term, Innovention? A neologism that, in an effort to turbo-charge meaning, takes two perfectly eloquent and unassailable words and by combining them renders both suspect. It is a word developed by a committee, one that can only be spoken unironically if one is being paid to do so, like menus in chain restaurants that list “Snacketizers” and “Appeteasers.” Can’t you just taste the process-mapping? The neon-orange layer of melted reconstituted-milk-solids-derived “cheese,” the pink stratum of animal-protein-cultured “meat”? Vacuum-packed and irradiated and shipped to some franchise that itself was unpackaged from boxes sent directly from corporate, with ready-made walls of homey, weathered fake brick and battered retro license plates. “Innovention” can only leave a similar taste in the mouth. It makes one suspicious, wondering about the ways in which the object in question is found so wanting, so insufficiently innovative or lacking in invention to warrant this linguistic boost. (p.117)

Just another i-word.

Scenius

The musician Brian Eno invented a word to describe “genius” as the entirety of a scene, rather than the work of an individual:

Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or “scenes” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.”

You see:

Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you.

The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:

• Mutual appreciation
• Rapid exchange of tools and techniques

• Network effects of success
• Local tolerance for the novelties

When you find this place, hold on.

[via]

Gastrotypographicalassemblage

Steven Heller lets us in on the history of a wall of 1,450 letters:

The Gastrotypographicalassemblage was the 11-meter-wide, handmade, wooden typographic wall that hung in the CBS cafeteria in New York designed by Lou Dorfsman. The custom type created by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase and containing almost 1500 individual characters.

Over at Speak Up, more on the wall that Lou Dorfsman built:

The Gastrotypographicalassemblage, commonly referred to as “the wall,” is enormous; it is 33 feet in length and 8 feet in height, give or take a few inches. The piece is a mélange of food-related words and objects, a perfectly orchestrated collage of appetite. At last count, more than 1,450 letters converge to create this experience. No doubt, you have seen similar orchestrations, walls of words in restaurants or shops that were composed with vinyl letters; yet, the Gastrotypographicalassemblage is the first of its kind. It is the icon to which others owe their existence.

You have just a few more days before it exhibits to practice saying “Gastrotypographicalassemblage” out loud.

Words

The unstoppable Radio Lab introduces Words, where one thing leads to another:

Words have the power to shape the way we think and feel. In this stunning video, filmmakers Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante bandy visual wordplay into a moving exploration of how language connects our inner thoughts to the outside world.

It’s impossible to imagine a world without words. Over on the radio, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich help us do just that. Overlapping wisdom abounds.

[via]

Eunoia

Eunioa, a new book that tells the story, in a way, of vowels:

Eunoia is the shortest word in English containing all five vowels — and it means “beautiful thinking”. It is also the title of Canadian poet Christian Bök’s book of fiction in which each chapter uses only one vowel.

Eunoia abides by many rules:

All chapters must allude to the art of writing. All chapters must describe a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage. All sentences must accent internal rhyme through the use of syntactical parallelism. The text must exhaust the lexicon for each vowel, citing at least 90% of the available repertoire.

And excerpt from Chapter O:

Loops on bold fonts now form lots of words for books. Books form cocoons of comfort — tombs to hold bookworms. Profs from Oxford show frosh who do post-docs how to gloss works of Wordsworth. Dons who work for proctors or provosts do not fob off school to work on crosswords, nor do dons go off to dorm rooms to loll on cots. Dons go crosstown to look for bookshops known to stock lots of top-notch goods: cookbooks, workbooks — room on room of how-to-books for jocks (how to jog, how to box), books on pro sports: golf or polo. Old colophons on schoolbooks from schoolrooms sport two sorts of logo: oblong whorls, rococo scrolls – both on worn morocco.

See one in motion.

[via]

Fooding

Simon Schama on the language of food:

The overthrow of gastronomie for “fooding” is the most dramatic recent instance of a language act that is not just incidental to but inseparable from the constitution of a food universe. For it may be that we have now become too logorrhoeic for our own good, whether it’s the almost unimaginable proliferation of food journalism and cookbooks, the multiplication of television food programmes (I plead guilty as an occasional accomplice); the appalling habit (marked in the United States) of training waiting staff to deliver lengthy disquisitions and sermons on their specials — often, and inaccurately, with the personal pronoun attached (as in “my sea bass today comes with wild rice and a stuffing of celery root and rutabaga”). Then there is the menu itself — often a work of faux-literature minus any obligation to obey the basic rules of syntax.

A word of advice, one among many brainy passages:

I’ve made it my own rule of thumb — and I recommend it to you — never to order any item described with more than one verb.

Bon appétit.

[via]

Evolve

Paul Ford on evolution versus erosion:

In Latin evolvere means “to unroll,” like a sacred scroll. The word “evolve” implies action. But evolution isn’t what happens; it’s what’s left over. Traits arise in populations; death sweeps through; some traits survive to the next generation. And repeat. Species don’t evolve — they erode. And the rock keeps lifting.

Infinite numbers of patterns exist in eroded experiences; they present themselves in urban environments, in nature. Yet instead of focusing on what’s left behind, we, hurrying forward, miss them. Therein the paradox: staying behind may be moving ahead.

(thx, Jason)

Normals

Spencer Fry on the definition of “normals:”

A Normal is maybe not an everyday person in every way, but has limited Internet knowledge. They certainly don’t read TechCrunch, they haven’t heard of RSS feeds, they probably don’t have a smart phone or at least don’t have many apps installed, and although they surf the Web a lot, they have little clue what a web browser really is. Another telltale sign is that instead of going directly to web pages, they use the search bar. You know these people if you’re reading this blog.

It’s more important to reach normals:

Normals make up far more than 99% of Internet users. If you fail to reach the masses then you’ll simply fail. You can be the hottest startup on the block with 100,000 active early adopters, but I’d trade every one of those users for Normals in all cases.

Focus on normals. So simple and often overlooked.

Innovation

Scott Berkun on banning the i-word:

Einstein, Ford, Picasso and Edison rarely said the word innovation and neither should you.

Because:

Ask people who say innovation what they mean. If ever anyone says the word in a meeting, ask “Can you give an example of what you mean by innovative?” If they can’t, you’ve just saved everyone in the room hours of time. Using the i-word is often a cop-out for clear thinking. They are trying to signify creativity, without actually being creative.

A-men.

Cliché

Seth Godin on clichés:

In printing, a cliché was a printing plate cast from movable type. This is also called a stereotype. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. “Cliché” came to mean such a ready-made phrase. The French word “cliché” comes from the sound made when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.

His secret weapon on how to use clichés:

The effective way to use a cliché is to point to it and then do precisely the opposite. Juxtapose the cliché with the unexpected truth of what you have to offer. …. I often use the Encyclopedia of Clichés to find clichés that then inspire opposites.

Hear the sound of stereotypes, a 1949 Number Four VanderCook Proof Printing Press in particular.

Secret

Scott Berkun on the word “secret”:

The word secret makes the boring sound fun. Doing laundry is pretty boring, but secret laundry almost sounds interesting. The word secret promises short-cuts, tricks, or things people don’t want us to know, which all connote ways to get one up on others. This little semantic trick works well on newbies, since they know so little, anything can seem like a secret.

But according to Scott, the real secret is:

To invent or create is to take a bet against the unknown. No matter what you do, you are still betting you can do well in the face of many things that are out of your control. Don’t like that? Don’t want uncertainty? Then do something else. Comfort with risk and uncertainty is the real secret name of the game. Anyone who wants to create something new is placing a bet, that their view of the future is better than everyone elses’, or at least their competitors.

Analemma

On the solar eclipse analemma:

If you went outside at exactly the same time every day and took a picture that included the Sun, how would the Sun appear to move? With great planning and effort, such a series of images can be taken. The figure-8 path the Sun follows over the course of a year is called an analemma. This coming Tuesday, the Winter Solstice day in Earth’s northern hemisphere, the Sun will be at the bottom of the analemma. Analemmas created from different latitudes would appear at least slightly different, as well as analemmas created at a different time each day. With even greater planning and effort, the series can include a total eclipse of the Sun as one of the images. Pictured is such a total solar eclipse analemma or Tutulemma — a term coined by the photographers based on the Turkish word for eclipse.

Consistency takes planning and effort.

Wiat

A thank you note by David Bowie in reply to his first American fan letter:

When I called in this, my manager’s office, a few moments ago I was handed my very first American fan letter – and it was from you. I was so pleased that I had to sit down and type an immediate reply, even though Ken is shouting at me to get on with a script he badly needs. That can wiat (wi-at? That’s a new English word which means wait).

For anyone who launches a product, who bravely publishes that first book, who records music, who stands up for ideas of any kind — for anyone who performs for an audience without trackable means for people’s happiness — he or she knows the importance of receiving feedback. And a fan letter, invaluable.

The fan of note was Sandra Dodd, so moved, that she started a fan club on Bowie’s behalf. I find it charming that a 20-year-old Bowie turned around a thank you note immediately.

[via]

Cybernetics

Brian Eno, cybernetics, and systems thinking:

Cybernetics is one of the most widely misunderstood concepts. The word itself seems sinister and futuristic, but the term has ancient roots — the Greek word kybernetes, meaning steersman. Cybernetics was famously defined in more recent times by Norbert Wiener in 1948, as the science of “control and communication, in the animal and the machine.” Words like “control” may seem to have creepy overtones, but at its heart, cybernetics is simply the study of systems. “Cybernetics is the discipline of whole systems thinking…a whole system is a living system is a learning system,” as Stewart Brand put it in 1980.

Multitasking

Tyler Cowen on the human mind becoming more, rather than less powerful, and on a “change that is filling our daily lives with beauty, suspense, and learning:”

The word for this process is multitasking, but that makes it sound as if we’re all over the place. There is a deep coherence to how each of us pulls out a steady stream of information from disparate sources to feed our long-term interests. No matter how varied your topics of interest may appear to an outside observer, you’ll tailor an information stream related to the continuing “stories” you want in your life—say, Sichuan cooking, health care reform, Michael Jackson, and the stock market. With the help of the Web, you build broader intellectual narratives about the world. The apparent disorder of the information stream reflects not your incoherence but rather your depth and originality as an individual.

He ends his otherwise lengthy article with a tweetable version: “Smart people are doing wonderful things.”

[via]

Amateur

Michael Chabon reading from a piece titled “The Amateur Family:”

Perhaps there is no perfect word for the kind of people I have raised my children to be: a word that encompasses obsessive scholarship, passionate curiosity, curatorial tenderness, and an irrepressible desire to join in the game, to inhabit in some manner—through writing, drawing, dressing up, or endless conversational riffing and Talmudic debate—the world of the endlessly inviting, endlessly inhabitable work of popular art. The closest I have ever come for myself is amateur, in all the best senses of the word: a lover; a devotee; a person driven by passion and obsession to do it—to explore the imaginary world—oneself. And if we must accept the inevitable connotation of hopeless ineptitude that amateur carries, then at least let us stipulate that we shall be hopeless and inept like Max Fischer, the hero of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore: in the most passionate, heedless, and whole-hearted way.

Cadence

Jeremy Denk regarding the Goldberg Variations:

If “cadence” were a word in the dictionary (OK, it is, but you know what I mean), Bach in the Goldberg Theme has found one of its less-often-used meanings; one of the fun ones; and he locates this meaning with the help of the “words” that he uses to lead into it … through their implications … This paradoxical hinging of the cadence (return) on the back end of the arch (departure) gives a sense of motion and transcendence to the conclusion: it puts wings under earth.

Work

Anthony Bourdain in a candid chat on how traveling for No Reservations has changed his perspective:

The more you travel, the less you realize you know. …. When you travel it changes the definitions of words that you thought you understood. You thought you knew what the word “work” meant. You didn’t know if you’re from the West until you’ve seen a rice farming community, for instance.

A much different voice from his Kitchen Confidential days, he goes on to talk about an increased sense of humility, open-mindedness, and putting things into perspective that result from travel.

Broccoli

Merlin Mann on Anne Lamott on Haruki Murakami on great sentences:

I couldn’t really place the sentence on my great sentences list because while it’s mostly grammatically sound and includes words and punctuation, it did not meet my own requirements of having a large foam cowboy hat, nor was it about how broccoli looks like little trees, nor did it create a fort made of sofa cushions in which I could enjoy the sentences included in my proper list of great sentences.

Boulevard

Steven Heller interviews Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are, the classic story about childhood frustration mitigated by the imagination.

“That is a boulevard, and those are automobiles.” And she added, “You mustn’t worry.” But that put into my head the word “boulevard,” and it has always been a major word in my life. I’ve never used it in a book. But it convinced me of how children will hold on to words and images for their whole life long. I just have to hear the word “boulevard” to get gooseflesh. So, in a sense, New York was a place where there were boulevards, fires and incredible danger.

Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers collaborated on a screenplay due out any day, and its Wild Things Week in New York Oct 12-16.