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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/