“Have you noticed,” a colleague remarked to me today, ” that we no longer call computers ‘computers’? Here’s my iPhone. It’s a computer, but we never call it a computer.” He went on to say that the only thing we call a computer has a keyboard, such as a desktop or a laptop.
It’s true. We have tablets or book readers (Kindle, Nook, iPad, and the like), cell phones (some more sophisticated than others), global positioning systems — computers all in reality, but we don’t call them that anymore. These newer devices have shed their identities as “computers.”
I decided to see what the formal language world says, and as usual it appears to remain in the past, including none of the newer devices. Type “computer synonyms” into Google, and you get this result from http://thesaurus.yourdictionary.com/computer :
Personal computer, PC, microcomputer, minicomputer, mainframe, laptop computer, home computer, workstation, supercomputer, electronic brain, thinking machine, data processor, word processor, calculator, processor, supermini, superminicomputer, supermicro, master control, number cruncher*, machine, cybernetic organism, digital computer, analog computer, network, neural net, neural network.
Various trademarked brands of computers include: IBM, Apple, Macintosh, Mac, Compaq, Cray, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Digital, NEC, Sun, Amiga.
And lest you think this is an isolated citation, here what Roget’s Thesaurus (http://thesaurus.com/browse/computer) says:
CPU, MAC, PC, abacus, adding machine, analog, artificial intelligence, brain*, calculator, clone, data processor, digital, electronic brain, laptop, mainframe, micro, microcomputer, mini, minicomputer, number cruncher, personal computer, thinking machine
Most of these synonyms we don’t use anymore, and certainly not as a prime description. The computer is so ubiquitous, so intertwined in our lives, that we no longer pay much attention to the word, but we can’t live without the thing, whatever it’s now called, that used to be so named.
–Len Schiefer
2 Comments
The term is doomed by its success. Once a computer became not only a subsystem but core infrastructure, products using computers for application functionality came to be called by their brands or their legacy name (“phone”) instead of their construction. The aspect of computer as universal data tool leads us to label devices by function, not form (beyond the cosmetic appearance, which follows function).
I agree that the word computer seems to be getting more obsolete when it comes to the iPhone, tablets or book readers. However, just about every electronic device, gizmo, machine, appliance, and automobiles are controlled by some type of a “computer.” So, I guess the name computer will continue to be applied in these areas. Thanks for the information.
Post a Comment