Brian Eno‘s list of words that didn’t exist in 95 (scroll halfway)

gq-magazine.co.uk

2 points·whoisstan··4 comments

He points out that that they either didn't exist, or weren't "in the air" when he wrote the diary. Algorithm existed, for one example, but now it has a deeper, sometimes darker connotation than it used to.

That being said, it looks like he missed geocaching.

Half of them seem like products/companies. A large number of others like "AI (artificial intelligence)" clearly predate 1995 by decades or in the case of "algorithm" by centuries.

I did not get passed the "a" words before closing this article.

I agree, I spotted some words that were in use before 95 as well, like Antifa for example, but it’s his list of words, not an official one. It could be useful and simple practice for people to engage in.

>Half of them seem like products/companies.

So? Products/companies can have profound impact, societal and cultural, be taken for granted, and it can be unimaginable that they didn't exist just 10 or 20 or 25 years ago.

For example: Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Uber, Spotify, iOS and Android, didn't exist 20 years ago.

Today they're a huge part of western (if not global) everyday life. That's part of the purpose of the list - to note how common everyday words/things we have almost forgotten ever being without are quite recent additions to our lives.

(Eno's list is not even about words not existing entirely. It's about them not being the focus of some much attention, in the media, the news, politics, everyday life etc).

This is one of my favorite webcomics on the subject:

https://abstrusegoose.com/572

Reply on news.ycombinator.com