Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  The Written Word    What are they talking about?
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
What are they talking about? Login/Join
 
Member
posted
From computerworld.com: "But cumulative also refers to the gestalt of Windows 10 updates: They're entities that cannot be broken into their parts."

"Gestalt???" Shortcoming, or some other term yes, but gestalt? Hmmmm... Am I missing something since I'm not a techie?
 
Posts: 6168 | Location: Muncie, IndianaReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of arnie
posted Hide Post
"Gestalt" means an organized whole that is more than the sum of its parts. Its use in this context seems unremarkable.


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 
Posts: 10940 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
I've long assumed that the parts of a gestalt WERE capable of being separated from the whole. Am I wrong?
 
Posts: 6168 | Location: Muncie, IndianaReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
In my view you are correct, Geoff.
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
I think arnie's right. The OED Online says:
quote:
A ‘shape’, ‘configuration’, or ‘structure’ which as an object of perception forms a specific whole or unity incapable of expression simply in terms of its parts (e.g. a melody in distinction from the notes that make it up);
 
Posts: 2878 | Location: Shoreline, WA, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
In the context of the citation in post #1, isn't Windows 10 still Windows 10 if a particular function is deleted? If so, is it a gestalt? I'm still unsure.
 
Posts: 6168 | Location: Muncie, IndianaReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
A number of points.

1. I think it's referring to the Windows 10 UPDATES as a gestalt rather than to Windows 10 as a whole because the updates can't be broken apart and have to be installed all together.

2. I don't think it's a very good use of the word. There would be far better, and clearer, ways to express it.

3. Windows 10? Now I understand. We are using the little known definition of "Gestalt" - pile of steaming horse excrement. Big Grin


"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
 
Posts: 9421 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
I do see that the dictionary defines gestalt precisely how arnie has stated the definition. Here is another definition I found, and this is more the way I've seen it used: "A configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that it cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts." In this one, it can't be described merely as the sum of the parts, but it doesn't say the part is more than the sum of its parts. One way that I've seen it used is if a patient is getting a lot of pills. When you look at them altogether, as gestalt, you can immediately see that they are right. Of course, for patient safety, we have to look at them individually too.
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  The Written Word    What are they talking about?

Copyright © 2002-12