Well said Terry.
Cheers.
Fil
On 18 December 2010 05:37, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Luke,
> Thanks for the heads up. It appeared also in ACM news this week.
>
> Drat. five years ago I'd had a research assistant manually do the curve for
> the term design from 1900 to 2000 and hadn't yet got around to publishing
> it!
>
> The new ability of Google to do an historical word count isn't anything
> like
> useful as it seems in a research context unless one is looking at folk use
> of terms. Any historical analysis of particular word use needs to
> differentiate between the everyday folk meanings of a particular term and
> the occurrences when the same term is used in a specialised
> accurately-defined manner. This difference, and carelessness over it, is at
> the root of much of the historical mess in the design theory and design
> research.
>
> Unless we are careful in how we use the new Google dictionary tools, and
> avoiding using these forms of Google's tools when we are referring to
> words defined accurately for research purposes, we are likely to make the
> problems in the design research literature worse.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terry
>
>
> --
Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3, Canada
Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749
Fax: 416/979-5265
Email: [log in to unmask]
http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/
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