An i for an I has left us ill at E’s
iDon’t know.
iSuppose iShould just calm down and deal with iT.
But every time iSee one, iWant to cringe, scream or write a scathing letter to the customer service representative of the company that thought this was a good iDea.
iWant to avert the parts of my body through which iSee but would rather not, in this context, name.
i’M talking about the vexing new naming convention that leads people to think they can make their product seem innovative, digital and “technological” simply by sticking a lowercase “i” at the beginning of its name.
To thank for this, we have, of course, the iPod, the ubiquitous portable music player that plays songs from the iTunes digital store and has inspired an even more ubiquitous set of accessories, almost all of them named iSomething or iOther.
When Apple’s clever little Walkman update hit big, suddenly what had been a minor player in the arena of allegedly evocative introductory initials became the superstar.
At a Target store the other day, the culprits included iWake (clock/radio), iHome and iHome2go (clock radio and portable alarm/speakers), iCarPlay, iCable, iTV Link and iPack. The last of these is a “computer backpack with integrated smart fabric interface.”
Then there was iPax, whose box promised, like some digital-era Caesar, “iStore, iCharge, iDownload.” Or perhaps that’s the wrong emperor. It probably ought to be Claudius, immortalized in novel and TV miniseries as “I, Claudius.”
Seeing so many tag-along products crammed into one aisle is the department-store equivalent of seeing a bus filled with people wearing white ear-bud headphones. Instead of “cool,” you’re inclined to think “cult” or, worse, “cliche.”
And remember, this was only Target. Apple Computer stores, spawning ground of the iPod, are so crowded with lowercase i’s you suspect some bizarre keyboard malfunction. iMac is a computer, iLife is a software suite, iSight is a camera and so on.
The i’s do not have it only amid Apple products, some of which predate the iPod, and iPod accessories. Over in Target’s housewares section sat the products of iRobot, a company whose line of automatic vacuums includes the $300 Scooba “floor-washing robot.”
Back when Isaac Asimov wrote the science fiction stories collected in 1950 under the title “I, Robot,” people invested in the machines with high hopes and deep fears. Now they perform our menial labor and, according to the reviews, take their sweet time about doing it: iExpensiveButNotSoUsefulRobot.
Target does not sell the iBuzz, a “music-activated sex toy” from Britain, or HP’s iPaq, a pocket PC that has its own batch of i-accessories.
More promising but still annoying is the Mitsubishi i, a micro-car sold only in Japan, for now. The lowercase letter, one presumes, conveys both the vehicle’s modernity and its modest proportions.
The ones who ought to be most upset at all of this are the letters E, X and Q. Each had its day in the product-naming spotlight.
Q, generally inoffensive, signified a reach for a kind of intelligent quirkiness: James Bond’s personal gadgets guy, or Infiniti’s Q45.
X, immortalized by the generation and the games, was about extremes, and it was so successful at it that the old XXX connotations all but disappeared.
More lasting has been the alphabet’s fifth letter. E, of course, was i before i, no matter whether it came after C. It was short for “electronic,” but it came to try to signify, as i does now, all things digital and technologically progressive. Never mind that one of the current standard-bearers, eMachines, is a discount PC line. The power and predominance of “e-mail” trumps all mediocre usages.
Even if it carries a whiff of must, give me e over that little i appendage any day. iRecoil at the way the latter flouts the rules of English, in a way that’s supposed to be rebellious but instead comes off as cutesy as a fudge store.
The proper, capitalized I is a bold assertion. I am here. I stand straight and tall. I matter.
In the fey little vowel imposed upon us by the iPod, the self seems to be reduced to a mere whisper: i am sorry for imposing myself on you. i am insignificant. i listen to music as i walk around, but i do it with earphones on.
But it’s a false humility. The essential quality of the iPod is narcissism: The world I can create in my head, through music or podcasts, is much more interesting than what you people can come up with. The iNames are an extension of that narcissism.
It’s time to stop. It’s time to say: e-nough.
*
Steve Johnson is Internet critic for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune company.
