Daniel Gilbert’s homepage is the fabulously named hedonic psychology laboratory within which there is a page called ‘playing’. The page has the tag line ‘frivolous linkageZ’ (he’s got a thing about Z).
Slightly outside most people’s expectations for the page is the section called deathZ -which includes the links to Find a Grave and Dying Words .
Control a Man in a Chicken Suit, Kwazy Rabbit and Walls with Things Written On Them are probably closer to mainstream definitions of playful.
Matt Jones also mention Gary Penn’s concept of ‘toyetics’, an interesting concept but one I can’t help feeling is destined for another list of hated words, just like this Lulu Blooker list.
I had ambivalent feelings about that Lulu list since one of the ‘winners’ folksonomy has dogged the last few years of my career, with far too many people, who should know better, getting confused about a useful idea and thinking it means we can get rid of all the BBC’s librarians.
But neologisms seem to be another way we entertain ourselves. Fun with words, even. The BBC’s newfangled broadcasting mechanism once upset C. P. Scott, the editor of my old employer the (Manchester) Guardian:
“Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it” – C. P. Scott
Just like metadata then, another common work topic.
And this week Information Architect as a job title was lampooned in Private Eye using, shock horror, a BBC job ad in their Birt-Speak feature.
I’m neologisms all over at the moment.