The depreciation of ‘gadgets’
An ignite talk by Mark Argo about the increasing open-sourcing and personalization of gadgets begins with a fun account of the way in which the word gadget has evolved and been depreciated. According the usual on-line sources (OED, dictionary.com, Wikipedia), the origin of gadget is not entirely clear, but there was a late-19th early-20th century sense that gadget was originally a good thing. An early appearance of the word occurs in the 1918 memoir of a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps (”Above the Clouds”): “our ennui was occasionally relieved by new gadgets — “gadget” is the Flying Corps slang for invention! Some gadgets were good, some comic, and some extraordinary.”
Argo highlights that gadget covered useful inventions back in the day and lightly laments its devolution. (Think how it is used today: “gadget” plays are gimmicks in football and seen most frequently in bad football movies; gadget freaks are unnaturally attached to their devices; gadget and gizmo are ways for normal people (either the hero or the villainous suit who doesn’t get it) to marginalize something as esoteric).) Argo kind of undermines his attempt to recover the word by highlighting some laughable, if useful (who knows), canes: one has a ruler for measuring horses at the racetrack, one has doctor supplies.
One of the things this sparked for me, was that we no longer have a word that covers the sense of invention in the “Above the Clouds” quote. Something that highlights the excitement and potential value of something. The Name of the Rose (one of my favorite movies and favorite books) has a great gadget scene in which Brother William (of Baskerville . . . get it?) is inspecting a book and whips out a crude pair of glasses.
This gets the other brothers all a-twitter:
Which prompts the best Sean Connery picture ever:
An earlier scene shows Brother William’s other ‘dangerous’ possessions:
In the scene, Brother William slowly unpacks the items (for our benefit) but, the moment he hears footsteps (of the approaching abbot), he throws a cloth over them and assumes a casual air. The gadgets are an hourglass and an astrolabe. (Brother William takes astronomical measurements at night.)
I love how these things have life-changing and even heretical potential. Sadly, my mind, now owned by marketing-speak, can only come up with tepid words: innovation, game-changing, category-creator, novelty, differentiator. Invention has potential, but it goes to sad cranks toiling in their workshop hoping to strike it rich with their invention (and the inevitable cliche of the inventor who actually does create something great, but never sees the rewards). Gadget’s not terribly exciting, but it has some of the energy of the word invention back in the day.
On his site, Argo lists the links he refers ton in a delightfully low-rent way:
