I’m going to poke a little fun at the Tetherless World Constellation. And who wouldn’t want to with a name like that ;) . Having met all of the professors at some stage, I’m guessing they will forgive this little fish her jibes if they ever read this....at least I’m hoping so!

From thefreedictionary.com, we could take our definition of a constellation as meaning "A set or configuration, as of related items, properties, ideas, or individuals”, but I’m sure they really meant the other definition of “A gathering or an assemblage, especially of prominent persons”. So given the term "World” precedes constellation, perhaps this then means they are the most prominent persons in the world? And let us suppose that "tetherless" means "without tether”, where tether is taken to be defined as "a ropelike restraint used as a safety measure”. Hmmm, so I guess this really means that these most prominent people in the world are floating out in space...right? ;)

I didn’t think I was old enough to be moaning about fads, but tetherless computing seems like a flash term that describes incremental development rather than a more dramatic paradigm shift. And at the end of the day you are in some way tethered, whether it be to the limits of your hand held devices and the servers you are subscribed to or tethered to the geography of your location as a user. Nothing is truly tetherless.

Now if I were to have the money for a jolly big research group, I think I would call it something like "The Universal Geosemanticinformatica Milky Way“. Great huh!?