Names matter?

17-January-2005

[ ICT and learning ]

Email to Stephen Downes

Dear Stephen

Thanks for bit on National Guidance Research site in OL Daily. Small point - my name is spelt with two tts as in Attwell.

I normally don't really care what people call me but in age when net identities has become so important it does raise some issues. Out of curiosity I did a search on Graham Atwell and to my amazement found nearly 10 pages on Google with my name wrongly spelt!

Is this a case of split virtual personalities?

I was talking about this to my friend Alan Brown the other day. He mentioned Google Scholar. Whilst I suppose Google intend the search engine to be used for topic based searching, along with many others I suspect, I tend to use it to search for work by people. Sort of works for Attwell - although there is an interesting juxtaposition of a paper of mine followed by a citation to something called "Secondary Insults to the Injured Brain". But - more to the point - he pointed out if you have a name like mine, there is no chance of finding anything he has written in the deluge of A. Browns.

So - names matter - could this be a future consideration for parents in choosing kids names?

Cheers

Graham


Graham Attwell; 17-January-2005 10:50:55;