demon

[Timothy Mason]

On Sun, 2003-08-17 at 04:06, John McCreery wrote:
> 
> On 2003.8.17, at 02:15 午前, Timothy Mason wrote:
> 
> >>
> > 'Daemon' now has a separate meaning within the computer sciences - and
> > in Philip Pullman's novels, where it refers to a familiar which is a
> > manifestation of the person's inner self.
> 
> 
> Don't have time to run down the references, but I have a dim impression 
> that the original Greek appears in Plato where it indicates Socrates' 
> genius, the inner voice which inspires his philosophy.
> 
Recap :

1. A list member finds he has a non-standard pronunciation of 'demon',
and wonders whether it is entirely idiosyncratic or whether it is a more
widespread variant. He apparently receives no support for the second
alternative.
2. I point out that there are circumstances under which an alternative
pronunciation might be found - in the computer sciences - in which case
it is associated with an alternative spelling : 'daemon'.
3. I also threw in the information that this spelling has also been used
by Philip Pullman in his fantasy trilogy 'His Dark Materials' (which,
incidentally, is more popular with young readers than is the Harry
Potter series). 

Pullman uses the term - and the 'archaic' spelling - daemon in a
deliberate attempt to evoke a pre-Christian understanding of the soul.
The early Unix prgrammers who used the same word - and the same spelling
- to refer to autonomous routines such as 'cron' may well have been
thinking of the engineer's demon - or of Maxwell's demon, who has a
similar function. But they chose to use the archaic spelling. There has
been a tendency among later users to differentiate the word not only
orthographically, but also in pronunciation.

Unix was born in and around 1969/70, and emerged fully into the world in
about 1976. I do not know how old Bryllars is, but he may have come into
contact during his formative years with computer people who used the
term 'daemon', pronouncing it in a non-standard way. (I actually think
it more likely that he developed an idiosyncratic pronunciation, as
children often will when they learn to read in English, the orthography
of which appears to have been designed to confuse - grist to Bourdieu's
mill).

Why did the early Unix developers use the 'archaic' spelling? In part,
this goes hand in hand with the popularity among programmers of fantasy
games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, and their attachment to such
story-tellers as Tolkein - a subcultural trait which emerges most
clearly in the Unix/Linux world, but also affects Windows users who now
find their computers infested with 'wizards' rather than installation
routines.

But it may also have something to do with the kind of linguistic
nostalgia that has spattered the English country-side with 'Ye Olde Tea
Shoppes' and so on. This bestows authenticity upon the ersatz at little
cost. It may be that programmers, in their tendency to use terms that
seem to hark back to a mythical pre-History, are attempting to hallow a
trade which resists placement within the status structure.

All of which is empty supposition leading nowhere ; what else can one do
on a hot, cloudy, humid day in Clichy but attempt to share the burden?

Best wishes

Timothy Mason