Too easy...

An article in the March 23rd New York Times discusses the role that old technology still plays in the computer business.

Get a load of this: " To survive, technologies must evolve, much as animal species do in nature... Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster in Silicon Valley [said]... 'Technologies want to survive, and they reinvent themselves to go on.'"

Yes! The technologies reinvent themselves. Apparently there are no designers. Now, I work for IBM, have for more than 3 decades. There is a museum of sorts in the corporate headquarters, showing the progress of computing over time. And there are no small, random, undirected changes in the chronology. On the contrary, there are huge changes in the technology. (When IBM announced the System 360, for instance, it was viewed at the time as a "bet the company" move because it represented such a radical departure from previous technology.)

I say again: we confuse ourselves about evolution, and about the world around us, when we misapply the term. We end up babbling nonsense. I offer Paul Saffo as the poster child for incoherence.

More abuse of the language

In a recent report on NPR's All Things Considered, we are told that the insurgents in Iraq have "evolved". (It is possible that they are quoting the officer who was interviewed; but there are no quotation marks, so "evolve" may be the reporter's word.)

Now, one might argue that the insurgents are deteriorating: remember the story where they had to strap up two women with Downs Syndrome to serve as human bombs (the bombs were detonated remotely)?

A digression: I can picture Bin Laden telling the terrorists that they simply have to learn how to "do more with less".

Let's grant that they have improved their bombs, and the means of hiding them. This is not "evolution". It may be "development", "maturation", "embellishment". I'm fairly certain that the insurgents did not arrive at the new designs through a series of small, random changes.

It gets more depressing. In the March issue of The American Spectator, Tom Bethell has an article that discusses establishing democracy in unfree countries. At one point, he says "Absent civic order, a strong central power is probably the essential starting point. Then that power may be gradually relaxed and decentralized, and the country may reach a stage where law, property, and perhaps even an independent judiciary evolve." Wouldn't "develop" be a better word?