23 November 2019 | New Scientist | 53The back pages Feedback
Got a story for Feedback?
Send it to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street,
London WC2E 9ES or you can email us at
[email protected]Twisteddoodles for New Scientist
Scream my name
As has been widely reported,
the company formerly known as
Facebook is undergoing a high-
profile rebrand. It is getting a new
logo and changing its name. The
new moniker is slick, professional
and just a teensy bit shouty. Yes,
Facebook is now FACEBOOK.
Feedback is EXCITED, but also
wonders whether the diminishing
appeal of Facebook – sorry,
FACEBOOK – to younger social
media users will be revived by a
name that looks like it was written
by a troll who forgot to disable
caps lock on their keyboard.
Perhaps reflecting this, not all of
FACEBOOK’s services will be known
as FACEBOOK. The networking site
formerly known as Facebook will
continue to be known as Facebook,
although it will now be run by
FACEBOOK. Meanwhile, formerly
Facebook-owned entities such as
WhatsApp and Instagram will carry
the upgraded FACEBOOK logo.
Although now confused,
Feedback believes in experts, and
isn’t one to gainsay the wisdom
of no doubt highly recompensed
marketing gurus. So henceforth,
please: this column is brought to
you by FEEDBACK.
AI tipping point
ANYONE WHO HAS WATCHED –
OK, NOW HOW DO WE TURN THIS
OFF? Anyone who has watched the
viral videos of Boston Dynamics’
robots will have been impressed
by the grace of these machines
under pressure. In very nearly the
words of tubthumping Brit band
Chumbawamba, they get knocked
down, but they get up again. How
have their creators imbued them
with such a human-like ability to
recover from being unbalanced?
The company’s CEO, Marc
Raibert, let the secret slip in an
interview with BBC News: child
experimentation. “I have video
of pushing on my daughter when
she was one year old, knocking her
over, getting some grief,” he said.
“She was teetering and tottering
and learning to balance and I just
wanted to see what would happen.”
Raibert says he and his daughter
remain “good pals”. But clearly this
isn’t an approach best repeated, let
alone taken any further. We don’t
want Jeff Bezos, say, sticking a
toddler in a cardboard box to test
Amazon’s delivery methods, nor
Elon Musk tossing children in the
air to see which way up they land.Best new words
Collins Dictionary has named
“climate strike” as 2019’s word of
the year in a sign that the world is
getting more worried about global
warming and less worried about
what constitutes a word.
Doubling down on its insistence
that two-word phrases count, the
dictionary included “double down”
on its shortlist. This isn’t a reference
to a trend towards better-stuffed
pillows, FEEDBACK is disappointed
to learn, but rather to the tendency
of figures in power caught saying
something wrong to cover it up by
saying something even wronger.
FEEDBACK – it’s already getting
a bit exhausting, isn’t it? – feels that
the usual approach of highlighting
new words coined to match existing
meanings is old hat. Why not
instead recognise existing words
whose meanings have miraculously
changed to reflect new realities?
First nominees include:
Glacier (noun) – formerly a
mighty, slow-moving river of
ice, now a small, sad trickle of
microplastic-infused water.
FACEBOOK (proper noun;
also “Facebook”) – formerly a
social-media platform populated
by updates from friends and
family, and cute cat videos, now
a social-media platform populated
by unfocused rage, Russian trolls
and cute cat videos.
Self-partner (verb) – formerly
an activity unmentionable in print,
now a synonym for being single.
As in: “I’m self-partnering. Why
are you looking at me like that?”
If you have encountered other
neologisms that deserve our
attention, do please let us know.Mordaunt humour
As already hinted, the web can be
a nasty place, full of harassment,
abuse and thousands of people
making the same joke about self-
partnering. Former UK defence
secretary Penny Mordaunt has
put her head above the parapet
with a plan to combat it. The
current prospective parliamentary
candidate for Portsmouth North
is campaigning for six new emojis
to be added to the existing lexicon,
which she hopes will contribute
to a kinder, gentler cyberspace.
Feedback’s favourite is a teal
sphere, mouth turned down in
tearful disappointment, raising
a single finger as if to admonish
a wayward child. Mordaunt
has christened this sad ball of
frustration “That won’t do...”, and
suggests it could help netizens
put racists, misogynists andgeneral trolls back in their place.
Feedback has no intention of
contributing to the culture of
abuse that Mordaunt so rightly
condemns. But knowing netizens
as we do, our response must be a
sad, finger-wagging teal emoji.Spinning clocks
We have received many excellent
proposals for how to describe
clockwise and counterclockwise for
Generation Z students unfamiliar
with analogue clocks (2 November).
There was one outstanding
contender: clockwise is the direction
of the spinning animation often
displayed while waiting for a
computer program to perform an
action such as loading a video. We
learn that this is called a “throbber”
in the trade, and look forward to
“counterthrobberwise” featuring
in 2020’s words of the year. ❚