Too Much Marketing Hype, Too Many Cutesy Names

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

I want to expand on my point about "cutesy" names. Believe me, I am
not just picking on Bob Hettinga when I call "e$" a cutesy (and even
execrable) name.

But marketing hype is the bane of our age.

People start picking company names long before they have anything to
sell. Cleverness in naming is paramount. This is all fed by the
thousands of mazazines, with most writers thinking that every section
of an article has to to be tagged with a pun or clever phrasing. Thus
we are barrraged with crap like "Toll booths on the Information
Highway," 

Examples:

* Digital Superhighway. Infobahn. I Way, etc. More coming every day.
Every two-bit journalist wants to express his cleverness. Lots of bad
puns, lots of stupid alliteration.

* DigiCash, NetCash, EBux ("E bucks"..get it?), DigiFranques, E Bills
(rhymes with "T Bills"), e$,  Digidollars, etc.

(About a year or so ago, someone was pushing hard to get "DigiMarks"
accepted, with the abbreviation "DM." The name collision with
Deutschmarks (DM) was apparently intentional. Clever, in a sophomoric
way, but not useful. Similarly, "e$," with its U.S-centric resonances,
is cute, but not very useful. And actually _misleading_, as it
suggests a system tied to the U.S. dollar, when I presume no such
linkage is intended.)

Good and descriptive names are needed. In fact, the crypto community
is probably lacking good names in some areas. "Digital cash" has a
different flavor from "electronic money," which in turn has a
different sense than a less flash description like "Chaum-style
digital money." A lot of the confusion about NetCash not being "real"
digital money, as one example, is over this naming confusion.

So, good names are needed. Names that clearly evoke the underlying
concepts, without misleading hype.

But the "premature productization" that comes from naming things that
don't yet exist with Madison Avenue-inspired names is where I think
the problem lies.

This is paralleled by the proliferation of company names...every
consultant seems to have his own cutesy name. Don't get me wrong:
names are important, and names don't have to be boring and banal. The
issue is really about confusing the _naming_ of something with the
_actual creation_ of items of value.

I don't believe naming = creation, and creation is what interests me.

(Yes, the term "crypto anarchy" was my naming, back in 1988. I thought
it descriptive of the set of ideas, especially the political ideas.
Perhaps I'm guilty, too, of too much hype. In any case, I've avoided
such colonizations of name space in recent years.)


--Tim May

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
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