Theme 1 – Trademarking of generic or genre terms limits everyday language
- cubefox: “Meanwhile, 'cyberpunk' has been successfully trademarked in the US, even though it describes a literary genre. That's like someone trademarking 'space opera', 'romantasy', 'film noir' etc.”
- derektank: “Choose Your Own Adventure is also trademarked, though that trademark … did originate the name of the genre.”
- mitxela: “The colour purple is trademarked, for chocolate… You can't make a game called Cyberpunk but you can use it for anything else.”
- pryce: “It was 'metaverse' that Neal Stephenson coined … 'Meta' is a prefix from Ancient Greek …”
Theme 2 – Corporations scooping up sci‑fi / counterculture‑coined words without credit
- jMyles: “Whatever else is real or myth … the term 'cyberspace' emerged amidst - or at least adjacent to - a lot of LSD and Grateful Dead tapes.”
- Eric_Gullichsen: “Timothy Leary did say 'The PC is the LSD of the 1990s' on the back cover of his 1994 book …”
- vessenes: “… Neal Stephenson coined the term ['Meta'] in 1992. As far as I know, they never sent thanks in any form.”
- pryce: “It was 'metaverse' that Neal Stephenson coined (which Meta did take and use …).”
Theme 3 – Cultural loss and resistance to the erosion of the linguistic commons
- chr-s: “It's a shame we've lost 'meta' and 'grok'.”
- chrisweekly: “I will not stop using good words like those. (We really do need a direct replacement for 'trump' in card games, though.)”
- nekusar: (references to Lord of the Rings terms such as Palantir, Anduril, Narya Capital) – illustrates the desire to keep evocative words in common use.