You & I

Apple introduced the iMac in 1998. According to Steve Jobs, the lowercase "i" stood for "individual" and "inspire", among other things. Unstated but obvious was its connection to the capital "I", as in my self. Anyway, that was the start of "i" being at the head of Apple products.

A few years later, in 2005, YouTube was launched. Here the personal pronoun was undisguised. It's a proverbial tube, like what we call the TV set, but it's all about you.

There was a certain kind of individualist idealism at play here. Phony and patronizing, to be sure. But the technology had to be marketed and sold with the promise that it would empower you, raise all its users to the level of tycoons and princes.

That seems a long time ago now. Tech barons have taken to making Bond villain-like threats about how much their creations are going to destroy and make obsolete. Underneath, the attitude has always been "I'm more important than you." Now it's "I matter. My Tamagotchi matters. You do not."

New under the sun

Funny how words and phrases can shift on you.

Merriam-Webster dates the term "new wave" to 1960. They don't seem to have a reason to lie about that. For now I'm not going to go into the question of when Merriam does have reason to lie about something. But assuming this point of etymology to be accurate, the phrase dates to the time of the French Nouvelle Vague, i.e. Truffaut, Godard, etc.

Then there's new wave music. New wave rock became a current term in 1977 when it became apparent that punk itself wasn't going to make commercial inroads, at least not in America. It remained in use until about halfway through the 80s. Not necessarily referring to the same thing, though. I love Talking Heads and Elvis Costello. Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls are also fun. But the latter two were not doing what the former two did. The culture had changed, with language hard pressed to catch up.

"New wave" was used up to 1984 to describe new music. After that it faded out. But currently a lot of people assume that any popular music from the decade that wasn't rap, hair metal, or heartland rock must be new wave. Time monkeys with words and concepts too.