Today’s word of the day is myopic. The Dictionary Project’s email this morning defines the adjective in two ways: 1. “nearsighted; unable to see distant objects clearly”; and 2. “shortsighted; lacking foresight or good judgement” (these from the email; if you go to the Dictionary Project’s website, you will find a different word of the day though I do not know why).

According to www.etymonline.com, myopic entered the language around the year 1800 with the first meaning, and the second meaning appeared around 1890 (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=myopic). But to get the full etymology, you have to go to myopia because myopic is myopia with the –ic suffix which turns the noun into an adjective. So the etymology of myopia reads like this: “’short-sightedness,’ 1727, medical Latin, from Late Greek myōpia ‘near-sightedness,’ from myōps ‘near-sighted,’ literally ‘closing the eyes, blinking,’ on the notion of ‘squinting, contracting the eyes’ (as near-sighted people do), from myein ‘to shut’ (see mute (adj.)) + ōps (genitive ōpos) ‘eye’ (from PIE root *okw- ‘to see’). By coincidence the name describes the problem: the parallel rays of light are brought to a focus before they reach the retina” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/myopia). I really like the idea that this medical sounding term comes from the fact that near-sighted people squint when they try to see things far away.

And then we get metaphor, which in linguistics is “a pragmatic strategy used by speakers to convey to hearers something new that cannot easily be said or understood otherwise or to give an old concept a novel, witty, or amusing package” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/semantic-change). The adjective starts out describing something physical, the inability to see objects clearly that are some distance away. Then by analogy, people start using the word to describe people who cannot metaphorically see into the future clearly. Metaphor is a well-recognized process in linguistics, and there are many examples (mouse—a rodent, and a device for your computer).

On this date 40 years ago, the Apple corporation introduced nationwide the coming of the MacIntosh computer with an advertisement during the Super Bowl. The advertisement was directed by Ridley Scott, and it’s called “1984,” clearly referring to the novel by George Orwell. Here is what Wikipedia says about the ad:

In one interpretation of the commercial, “1984” used the unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a stylized line drawing of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother).
Originally a subject of contention within Apple, it has subsequently been called a watershed event and a masterpiece in advertising. In 1995, The Clio Awards added it to its Hall of Fame, and Advertising Age placed it on the top of its list of 50 greatest commercials.

Now, I have to admit that I do not remember seeing the ad. It appeared during the third quarter, and by that time the game was pretty much over. The Raiders eventually beat the Redskins (now the Commanders) 38-9, setting records for most points scored and largest margin of victory. Besides, I’m an Eagles fan, and I didn’t really care much for the Raiders.

But I did watch the ad as preparation for writing today’s word of the day, and I have to say that I wasn’t impressed. Ridley Scott had directed Blade Runner, released in 1982, and one of my favorite movies of all time. It helped to initiate the cyberpunk movement, along with Gibson’s Neuromancer. But the attempt to tell a complete dystopian story in 30 seconds just didn’t work for me. During the ad, the voice of the Big Brother-like character says, “Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory thoughts.” Then an athlete, dressed in white and red (the only real color in the ad—everything else is kind of gray), throws a sledgehammer into the screen featuring Big Brother, and the screen explodes. Then the voice over says, “On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”

But 1984 wasn’t going to be like 1984, at least not in the USA, and while the personal computer has democratized the distribution of information to a certain extent, it is not clear whether it has really made it impossible for governments to create a 1984-like world. China has used the internet and the concept of social media to create a social credit system. You can lose points for playing video games too much, and losing points could mean that you are not allowed to fly. And recently, in the USA, the government prodded social media companies to censor the speech of people.

So just as William Gibson was somewhat myopic in his cyberpunk classic (people in his near-future fiction still used land-line telephones), Ridley Scott and the Apple company were somewhat myopic in believing that making computers available to average people would make it harder for governments to become totalitarian.

The image today is a still photo from the “1984” ad, directed by Ridley Scott. By the way, the Apple MacIntosh that was available in 1984 cost $2,495. That would be over $7,500 today. And the Mac had far less computing power than an iPhone, which costs only $1,000. My first computer was a Kaypro II, which didn’t even have a hard drive—everything was saved on 5¼” floppy disks, including the software. And it cost me about $1,800 (about $5,500 today).