I'm off work for a while, but I'm still connected via the internet. Some of my friends use Twitter to share comments/thoughts on workshops they attend. Last week they were at a workshop on teens and how teens use technology. The speaker said

quote:

Teens are platform agnostic. print, audio, fan fiction. totally get into characters. For example: harry potter is platform agnostic. Book, audio, fan conventions, fan fiction, wii games. Harry is avail in all formats.

~quoted from tweets

This seems like a horribly wrong use of the word. Comments?

platform agnostic

I hear it and read it a lot. It's newish, tech-oriented, but not baffling. It's kind of along the lines of an older generation using catholic to mean universal rather than the Roman Church. Agnostic in this new sense simply means that somebody is not dogmatic about a subject, e.g., operating system agnostic. It can be said of applications or software, too, so it's not just people. (Cf. the 2nd meaning for the adjective in the A-H entry (link) "noncommital".)

I have never heard agnostic used in this sense. I've heard it used to mean "choosing none of the options," but never to mean "choosing all of the options," which the tweets you quoted seemed to be saying.

Does this mean that if a techie says to you, "What's your religion?" and you reply, "I'm an agnostic," the tech person will believe that you subscribe to all religions instead of none?

Wordmatic

Every time I see or hear anything about or from Twitter I become happier that I don't use it.

quote:

Does this mean that if a techie says to you, "What's your religion?" and you reply, "I'm an agnostic," the tech person will believe that you subscribe to all religions instead of none?

No, they will think that you are not committed or limited to a particular one.

So, if we go with that second definition . . . wouldn't it really imply that if something is platform agnostic, that they don't really think that any platform is good or reliable?

I would think a more appropriate term would be "platform universalist" or maybe "platform liberal"?

Considering the etymology of "agnostic," I have to agree with CW, but then I'm one of those loonies who think words ought not change without staying connected to their roots, so what do I know!

The etymology of agnostic is ἀ "not" plus γνο- "know".

So if we consider the etymology of the word, it should mean "not knowing" about platforms. It shouldn't mean "platform noncommital" or "not believing that any platform is good or reliable" or any of the other meanings suggested here.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: goofy,

I agree with Goody. In religion, an agnostic doesn't know if God exists or not, as opposed to an atheist who denies existence.

but having said that, I am familiar with the phrase "platform agnostic" and I had no problems understanding it when I first heard it.

Maybe they should say it's platform-spiritual-without-being-religious.

Maybe it is my religious background that makes the "agnostic" term confusing for me. I just don't think of "agnostic" as having anything to do with "using all different kinds of variations", like the phrase "platform agnostic" seems to imply. I need a better explanation for how this phrase came about, I guess.

Anyone know . . . or want to research for me . . .how this phrase came into use?

Well, CW, you and I are from different sides of the religion tracks, and I feel the same way you do about that use of "agnostic." I just posted in another thread about all of us having our "pet" language annoyances, and this may be one of ours.

Platform promiscuous sounds more apt to me. CW, I agree with your assessment. Probably if we went into the slashdot.com archives, we could observe the evolution happening.

BTW, since I use both PCs and Macs, I have been known to describe myself as bi-computular, but that doesn't seem to have a prayer of catching on.

Wordmatic

quote:

bi-computular

or maybe you're ambiformatious

diformatial