Archive for October, 2007

Metaphors That Outlive Their Origins

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

It sometimes happens. We create a metaphor to make something easier to understand, only to find that the new idea replaces the old, and as the old technology fades from use, the metaphor becomes almost unhooked from its original meaning.
Take, for example, the “carriage return” and “line feed” characters that are found in many computer […]

Veropedia and Information Ethics

Monday, October 29th, 2007

There is a new online encyclopedia called Veropedia, which is being developed by selectively taking content from Wikipedia, cleaning it up, and securing it in a non-editable format.
The idea seems to be that Wikipedia articles are often incomplete, and the accuracy of the information is not strictly controlled, since anyone can submit an edit for […]