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content/blog/2004-05-30-naming-the-future.md

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+---
+title: 'Naming the Future'
+date: '2004-05-30T09:52:00-04:00'
+permalink: /naming-the-future/
+tags:
+    - mediacommons
+---
+
+Well, the site renovations seem pretty much in hand — things are basically working (though you should let me know if you find something that isn’t), and the redirects and 404s are doing their respective jobs.
+
+So, given that, like [George](http://ghw.wordherders.net/archives/002004.html), I’ve got a big list of stuff to do this summer, it’s back to work for me.
+
+One such project, which I imagine will take some time, is the start-up of the [new online scholarly imprint](/on_the_future_of_academic_publishing/) I’ve been [talking about here](/mediacommons/) for a while now. And the two initial tasks in that start-up, I think, are naming an editorial board, and naming the thing itself.
+
+I’ve decided that, while MediaCommons and MediaTexts have much to recommend them, neither quite does what I’m hoping for; each is, in a weird way, too specific. As I’m hoping that the new thing will evolve into something as-yet unimaginable, I don’t want to saddle it with a name that seems to rein in its future, circumscribing its range.
+
+I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks contemplating names, and particularly software names, trying to figure out why I like the ones I like, and why the others leave me cold. After a fair bit of thought, I’ve determined that my favorite such name remains [Eudora](http://www.eudora.com), which has both an admirable simplicity and a impressive depth of reference, and which has in some mysterious way passed into the computing vernacular, seeming as obvious a choice as “Mail.” (No offense, [Steve](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/mail/).) That’s the kind of name I want — something evocative and non-literal but simple. (And something for which the domain is available.)
+
+It may be that I’m too concerned with this naming thing. A creative writing prof of mine once argued in class that a title was unimportant, nothing more than a handle with which one could pick up a text and carry it around. I disagreed then, and I disagree now; as Pynchon has it in [Gravity’s Rainbow](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140188592/plannedobsole-20), “names by themselves may have no magic, but the act of naming, the physical utterance, obeys the pattern.” I can’t help but feel that the name is key, that the act of naming can determine the thing’s future.
+
+So what are your favorite names — of software packages, of websites, of organizations? And why? What principles at work in those names might I learn from here?
+