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   viznut | Ville-Matias Heikkilä (viznut@venera.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Mar-2023 22:01:57 JST viznut | Ville-Matias Heikkilä
   I don't know if this happened elsewhere in the world, but in Finland it used to be a common misconception (in the 1980s and early 1990s) that computers "know" a lot of things, and you can ask about these things by writing questions in natural language (i.e. English, because that's the only language computers understand).
   
   It was mostly adults who had never touched a computer who asked annoying questions like "Can you ask your computer about <this and that>?" but even some kids who actually had a computer believed that there would be a special "questions asking mode" you could get to with some secret Basic command. It was often a huge disappointment to learn that there was none.
   
   I assume this misconception might have been fuelled by the fact that computer in Finnish is "tietokone", which literally means 'knowledge machine'.
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     Swagpuss McG (swagpussc@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Mar-2023 22:01:51 JST Swagpuss McG

     in reply to

     @viznut
     That's precisely what computers are now, so really tietokone is a much better noun than computer post 2023

     clacke likes this.
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     Marc (m2c_n3e@stackpointer.ws)'s status on Tuesday, 28-Mar-2023 22:01:59 JST Marc

     in reply to

     @viznut I remember watching a boy entering "can you show me a car or truck?" (in German) into an Amstrad CPC in a department store in Germany in the 1980s. So, the expectation of a computer knowing things and understanding human language is not exclusively limited to Finland. I am pretty sure that the wish for a machine like that was largely fueled by "Knight Rider" and "Star Trek: TNG" for me and my friends. ?

     clacke likes this.
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 15-Jun-2023 06:29:55 JST clacke

     in reply to
     @viznut Now I know why IT consultancy giant Tieto is named Tieto and why elevator (and other things) manufacturer Kone is named Kone. Thank you!