What does the i in iNaturalist stand for?

General
21

Easy ! A π-pod is an animal with 3,141592653589793… legs. :sunglasses:

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22

So if you had an iNatter from South Africa, and that person spoke Dutch, English, and Spanish, and they also enjoyed a bit of nudity, they might say:

“I naturalist een iNaturalist y naturist een iKapa!”
:stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: :laughing:
(writing the Dutch “in” as “een” for English pronunciation)

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23

The company iRobot – which makes among other things the Roomba robot vacuum cleaners like the one running around my house right now – was founded in 1990. (The name was presumably inspired by Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot”.) That would seem to pre-date the Apple company products that use i in their product names which may have in turn inspired iNaturalist’s naming.

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  • I, Robot is a collection of short stories by writer Isaac Asimov
  • The collection was published in 1950
  • The short stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction, starting in 1940
  • The name “I, Robot” was copied (stolen) from a 1939 short story by Otto Binder
  • It was the publisher who chose to name the series “I, Robot”, over Asimov’s objections
  • Even though Asimov didn’t like the theft of Otto Binder’s title, Asimov was heavily influenced by Binder’s 1939 short story
  • In 1979, Asimov said, “11 years later, when my robot stories were collected into a book, the publisher named the collection I, Robot, over my objections. My book is more famous, but Otto’s story was there first!”
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25

It’s similar to the ‘e’ in ‘eBird’. Kind of like in Email, the ‘e’ means electronic!

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26

That’s been my take on the name…

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27

But it could mean so much more: individualistic, inquisitive, independent, interlocutory, introverted. So many good descriptions of iNatters. ;-)

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28

Missed it by 10 years. The iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007.

Since Apple—the most envied and imitated company in the world—released its first iProduct the i-prefix has become ubiquitous. It stands for Internet.

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29

@davidillig, I think @ahospers was talking about the iNaturalist app on the iPhone (software), rather than the iPhone itself (hardware)

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30

Didn’t that come out with the founding of iNaturalist in 2008?

31

from tiwane:

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32

Specifically, sometime shortly before March 5, 2011: https://groups.google.com/g/inaturalist/c/F52_5AYXt_s/m/CexcAVf3-jcJ

33

I have always assumed it was the same i as in iPhone and stuff.
However, I have no idea (iDea :wink:) what that i is.

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