From Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2006:
Adam Greenfield is trying to speak and think very clearly, and to avoid internecine definitional struggles. As a literary guy, though, I think these definitional struggles are a positive force for good. It’s a sign of creative health to be bogged down in internecine definitional struggles. It means we have escaped a previous definitional box. For a technologist, the bog is a rather bad place, because it makes it harder to sell the product. In literature, the bog of definitional struggle is the most fertile area. That is what literature IS, in some sense: it’s taming reality with words. Literature means that we are trying to use words to figure out what things mean, and how we should feel about that.
I’ll be linking this one again later in a different context, but it’s worth going there and reading the whole thing.
(p.s. If I linksnatched this from you, I’m sorry — it’s been an open tab for days and I can’t remember where I spotted it.)
You may have found the link elsewhere, but one place it was discussed, in a different context, was on David Moles’ blog here.
And by coincidence, I just found that the same issue is discussed here.
If it was me, that’s cool — turnabout for me being a couple of hours late discovering those two Onion pieces last week.