Inventing Words

Inventing words is relatively simple as you do not need to actually make anything. We’ve already discussed making concepts by combining unrelated words in the post: Utopia, an Erotic Mystery – Used to Exemplify the Stretch Technique of Creativity and Invention. Inventing words is a little different and often comes up in the realm of trademarks. Trademarks are usually used for the name of a product of service.

I was a Patent Agent and Trademarks were along side so I have a little training on them. They should be suggestive but not descriptive. So you do not name your white staple invention, white staples. You would trademark it as Stealth – so we have Stealth brand staples. Now that is not making up a word but many people do for trademarks. Styrofoam, Kleenex. Kleenex suggests clean.

When making Web games or sites, sometimes you get a chance to make up words. Here are a few that I have made up:

• Gorgolon – an underwater civilization where the bubbles in their filtration system make a “gorgle”.
• Opartica – an online art maker
• Infizoom, Congon, Kitekilt, Choofu are combinations of shortened words for Motogami or motion games
• Gycopo is an acronym word for game you can only play once
• YesUmNo again a combination word for a voting game where you actually use the word as interface to vote yes, maybe (um) or no.
• Tilator – is a word plus an ending for a tiling tool.

Endings can be fun – we had an art movement called the Figmentalisticanarianismists. That reminds me, aside from names of things there are also words like traditional words where you are naming a concept:

• Nodism – is the philosophy of connection or nodes and in particular for a single hierarchy
• Focuso – the art of shooting photographs out of focus

There are words being invented all the time to cover our evolving experiences. There are a number of sites that foster this invention like wordspy. Some of these catch on better than others and the concept of memes is certainly related – memes also being a fairly newly invented word.

So have fun thinking of a word or two – often, as an Inventor, you need a name for your product or service or thought. If you have any words you would like to share, please leave a comment! I am currently inventing a technique to encourage more comments and will launch that here soon.

Utopia, an Erotic Mystery – Used to Exemplify the Stretch Technique of Creativity and Invention

Utopia – the erotic mystery set in… well, Utopia, is another example of a principle I call STRETCH – taking unrelated concepts or even words and finding some reason for them to be connected. Back in my psychedelic partying times, we used to play fit the facts (remember that one Gaven?). We’d find reason to fit a few different facts. It is a great exercise for creative story telling. And indeed, this post is directed at creativity which is and important aspect of invention.

In the last post, Gorgolon was mentioned. Gorgolon is the result of the combination of a “spot the artificial intelligence” game (a Turing test) and a poem about an underwater civilization written for the space rock band, Thee Gnostics. This combination stretched the creativity and a story was born as was a number of theoretical inventions – if you read the story. Inventions are still ongoing as people play Gorgolon and make up games and stories to fit the facts of the environment. Players are being STRETCHED and the results of their thoughts are seen by the winners of the game.

Getting back to Utopia, I had written four other mysteries for Moustache Mysteries and was wanting to write another. To do so, I made use of the Tower of Babel – a Dan Zen feature where people whisper unrelated words (nonsense) into the wind and the words are taken to the tower. Here, viewers can vote on how interesting the combinations are by using the radio buttons that construe the walls of the tower and then pressing the god button up top. The more interesting posts rise to the top and the less interesting ones fall to disappear into the ground.

I happened to whisper the phrase, “Sasquatch Seeds” into the tower. I was quite intrigued by this phrase as to what it might mean. And in combination with my conviction that I have seen the Hamilton Hairy wandering the escarpment of Hamilton and stopping to read poetry to some Swedish tourists… I STRETCHED and came up with a connection. (Connection is by the way a very closely related concept to stretch and connections have long been understood as a foreshadowing to invention).

SPOILER TO THE UTOPIA MYSTERY… So what does “Sasquatch Seeds” mean? Well, the Sasquatch, like a Loch Ness Monster, is in part a tourist attraction. A seed is birth. So we have the birth of a tourist attraction. In the Utopia mystery of 1998, over 4,000 people lined up to solve the mystery. They viewed the mystery through scopes. They thought the line up was completely unrelated but it was not. What they were lining up for was a reality show. They were watching six characters, hypnotized into thinking they were in Utopia and placed in a Utopian land of sustenance. Utopia pre-dated Reality Shows by two years. At least in America.

Does the ad for Utopia pictured above take on a little more meaning now? Here are some of the other ads and posters:

Utopia Promo 2 | Promo 3 | Promo 4 | Promo 5 | Promo 6

Dan Zen

Woken by Invention

This is my favorite way to get up and happily it happens often. I love sleeping and perhaps more so, dozing. And dozing is an easy time to invent. Your mind wanders from one thing to another – often surreally (do you like that one?). Sometimes I feel like I would slumber forever… but then comes that idea for which I have to get up and write down!

My idea this morning was that it would be cool to take screenshots of Dan Zen code in related fonts and post the pictures on flickr. I did this for the Canadian New Media Awards and I wonder if that is why I won. It looks kind of cool! The code below is from Gorgolon, the underwater civilization multiuser sci-fi game from 1995. The game and more particular, the story to match the games I consider one of my greatest inventions. You can read about it here: Dan Zen Blog on Gorgolon