Sometimes I start to type the heading for the blogpost with no real idea of what I am going to write. This was one of those days, but luckily the blog fairy sprinkled magic on me. For today when I typed in the blogpost title, I noticed something new. As I started to key in COVID, after two letters, the properly-capitalized word appeared in the auto correct pane of my iPad.
I don’t know how words enter the autocorrect dictionary. Perhaps the software registers a certain number of uses and then adds it, or perhaps these changes are sent down from on high from our Apple overlords. When I type DH, I get the option of DHUYVETTER, which would argue for the first option. However, a friend pointed out the the term Coronavirus is also in autocorrect now, and I have seldom, if ever, used that term. So it is likely that this adaptive dictionary has both AI abilities as well as remote editing from a central intelligence.
How does a word become part of our world? Can you remember the first time you heard the word Coronavirus? Depending on your circles and how widely you read, this was probably January or February (of course Coronavirus has existed in many strains for many years…as most of us know…now). It sounded remote and with the exception of a humorous connection to beer, very separate from us. When did the term Coronavirus become switched with the more technically correct COVID-19? Was this tied to the arrival in the west, when a vague illness, primarily in Asia, was now a very specific danger to us? I started typing COVID-19 in the title of this blog on March 18, 2020, and I believe today is the first time I saw it in Autocorrect. The extraordinary has become commonplace, and my iPad (and I suspect Apple) believes that it is a term that will be with us for a long time.
Be safe, be strong.