Google Nexus One Super Phone Shows Salient Use of "Sentience"?

GoogleNexusOneAds.jpg

The Nexus One Google phone has received fab first impressions from reviewers and is will be heavily promoted on the web. Google studies showed that wireless buyers were influenced by online research

We are bit confused by one of the Nexus One web banners. We understood almost all of the banners that illustrate a feature using only two or three haiku-ish words in the headline, followed by "Introducing the Nexus One with" followed by the feature - except for one.

During the press conference, Google said that it wants to keep the super phone buying process simple. Let's look at the text:

  • Camera Flash - Introducing the Nexus One with 5 MP camera.
  • Web Speed - Introducing the Nexus One with 1Ghz processor.
  • Developers Freedom - Introducing the Nexus One  with Android Market.
  • Curiosity Cosmos - Introducing the Nexus One with with Google Sky Maps.
  • Saying Going - Introducing the Nexus One with with Google Navigation.
  • Google Voice, Everybody - Introducing the Nexus One with with Google Voice.
  • Contacts, Possibilities - Introducing the Nexus One with QuickContact.
  • Sentience  Wallpaper -Introducing the Nexus One with with  live wall paper.

Okay, you English majors, lets get started.  Sentience Wallpaper!  Hugh? Live Wallpaper.

According to Merriam Webster sentience is  1. a sentient quality or state
2 : feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought.

Sentient means responsive to or conscious of sense impressions.
When we Googled sentience, Wikipedia defines it as:

  • Sentience is
    the ability to feel or perceive subjectively. The term is used in
    philosophy as well as in science fiction and (occasionally) in the
    study of artificial Inetelligence. In each of these fields the term is
    used slightly differently.
  • In eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all
    things that requires our respect and care. In science fiction,
    sentience is "personhood": the essential quality that separates
    humankind from machines or lower animals. Sentience is used in the
    study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or
    experiences, known to some Western academic philosophers as "qualia".
  • Some advocates of animal rights argue that many animals are
    sentient in that they can feel pleasure and pain, and that this entails
    being entitled to some moral or legal rights.
  • Although the term "sentience" is avoided by major artificial
    intelligence textbooks and researchers, it is sometimes used in popular
    accounts of AI to describe "human level or higher intelligence" (or
    strong AI). This is closely related to the use of the term in science
    fiction. Some sources reserve the term "sapience" for human level
    intelligence and make a distinction between "sentience" and "sapience".
    The Author Iain Banks uses "Sentient machines" in his The Culture
    Novels.

Google, we're sorry but your metaphor non-sentence use
of sentience does not have sentience or make sense. Your wallpaper in
no way can be as sentient as an animal and really doesn't imply "human
level or higher intelligence."

Okay, when your move your Nexus One the wall paper moves around, but that is a minor gesture technology that uses a motion sensor and accelerometer.  We tried to check out the wallpaper feature on the demo but couldn't find it.

Google, watch out because the FTC has new guidelines, can you prove beyond a shadow of a Droid that your wallpaper is really sentient? We also appreciate your ad revenue and are really glad that you like Wireless and Mobile News' banner size, but hope you understand that we writers, editors and etymologists, like to keep our words true and pure. Well, sentient seemed to be so salient, don't you think?

Besides that, we really still hope to get a review unit of the Nexus One to see for ourselves if it is really sentient.

We do want to thank you for the world "sentience."  We  made it our word of the day because when we saw the ad, we had to look it up in several sources including and excluding Google.

Readers are welcome to comment and tell Google if you think the Nexus One's metaphors offer sentience, non-sentience or nonsense...

Google Nexus One News Reviews

2 thoughts on “Google Nexus One Super Phone Shows Salient Use of "Sentience"?”

  1. There's no fooling wordsmiths... but here I see the beauty of marketing (a mistake can be turned into an opportunity!). It seems effective though... Although writers may not be the target market, that ad made you write about it, making people less critical about perfect and precise use of words than you are, curious. Now that you got their attention, Google is hoping they'd get hooked! 🙂

  2. Hay, I am too much interested to the new mobile set and it's marketing site as well as real market. But through Nexus One in the goole I get a ne era of the wireless and mobile marketing system.
    As a communication Engineerer,it is too much benefitcent to me and my customers and I will make a link of your site at my facebook for Super mobile marketing for this.

Comments are closed.