# AI is Velcro. And Kleenex. And an Escalator. And a Zipper.

*When a term means so much to so many different people that it doesn’t really mean anything at all.*

By [CURIOUS AF](https://paragraph.com/@curious_af) · 2025-06-04

ai, words, brand, trademark, trademarks, meaning

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In 1941, Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral took his dog for a walk. At some point, de Mestral became fascinated with the burrs that stuck to his dog’s fur.

Nature is cool. The burrs had adapted to hitch a ride.

De Mestral was more concerned with the “how” than the “why” of the situation, and he examined the burrs under a microscope. He studied the burrs for the next FOURTEEN YEARS before he was able to duplicate their tiny hook and loop design and introduce it to the world. De Mestral combined the French words for velvet (velours) and hook (crochet) and we’ve been using Velcro ever since.

  

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But most velcro isn’t Velcro. According to (the) [Velcro](https://www.velcro.com/original-thinking/the-velcro-brand-trademark-guidelines/dont-say-velcro/), Velcro is a trademark brand, and we diminish that brand when we casually toss the term around and say things like, “Velcro shoes” or Velcro wallet.”

Sadly for the de Mestral estate, that linguistic ship sailed a long time ago. I have used the word “velcro” to describe everything that looks and sounds and works that way my whole life. All the cool kids at my junior high school had velcro wallets. Until about 15 minutes ago I had no idea how velcro was invented or where the word came from.

Similarly, no one cares that the facial tissue you just used to wipe your nose isn’t actually a Kleenex, unless you got it out of a box branded as such by trademark owner Kimberly-Clark.

Over the years, people have adopted describing so many brand names as generic words that lawyers gave the practice a name: _proprietary eponym_. 

Linoleum. Zipper. Escalator. ChapStick. Trampoline. All of these words were once original brand names that we came to use and understand as common nouns in everyday speech.

We co-opt language that’s convenient and easy to share. Telling someone to “Google it” is way more efficient and fun than saying, “Open your internet browser and conduct a Boolean search.

What do you expect? Made-up words that become trademarks are catchy, symbolic placeholders by design. They are carefully crafted to get our attention and stick in our memories. Using these terms also establishes the speaker as a cool kid in the know – as opposed to the stickler who insists on saying things like, “Please pass me a facial tissue” and doesn’t get invited back to parties.

When it comes to computing, though, we sail our catch-phrase catamaran into dangerous waters. We know what a facial tissue is, so inventing a fun word to use in place of the literal term doesn’t interfere with our understanding or change the meaning. The new term is just a cute shortcut. But what happens when we make up words to stand for concepts and phenomena we don’t understand and can’t explain?

In computing and digital culture we often use familiar words (that we can easily define) to symbolize unfamiliar phenomena and concepts (that we can’t), which makes us feel more knowledgeable than we are. Admit it: the  “desktop” on your screen isn’t a real desktop. Your windows are not windows. Your mouse is most definitely not a mouse.

How many people do you know who can accurately define the word “internet”? Pro tip: it’s not an information superhighway. And I refer to arachnid silk structures and real estate as metaphors for universal resource locators just as much as the next guy, but that still doesn’t make a URL a website.

And now we’ve arrived at a point where people are repeating two letters way past proprietary eponym, all the way to semantic satiation (repeating a word over and over until it loses its meaning).

AI.

Easy to say. Easy to remember. Hard to elucidate.

Is Artificial Intelligence machine learning? Is it the computational equivalent of thinking? Does it imply sentience? Is it a manifestation of our desire, a projection of something human onto something inhuman? Is it a scam? Is it the future? The beginning of the end? The proof that we are nothing more than the sum of our neurons?

The good people at Velcro don’t want us to use a word that Georges de Mestral took nearly two decades to invent.

Maybe we ought to take more care in using a term that means so much to so many different people that it doesn’t really mean anything at all.

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**_What do you mean when you say “AI”? Drop me a line – I’m curious!_**

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Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. [Get the white paper here](https://48380173.hs-sites.com/open-source-learning-white-paper). Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

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Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click [HERE](https://app.unlock-protocol.com/checkout?id=68023463-6e71-4d4a-a2b5-7b9f2af78ead) to unlock your free membership subscription. 

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Here is a taste of what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.

**What I’m Watching –** 
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Have you ever seen music? I don't mean a performance of people playing music – I mean the music itself. Thanks to musician Reuben Levine, [here’s your chance](https://youtu.be/o3UbyTTFNGA?si=HgxfgVHHqd2XyVpG). Levine takes the work of 19th century French physicist Jules Antoine Lissajous (who used tuning forks to map out two-dimensional shapes, called Lissajous curves, that uniquely correspond to every musical interval) by creating three-note Lissajous curves that are three-dimensional. He then 3-D prints these three-dimensional Lissajous curves to show what these three-note chords "look" like in real space. 

**What I’m Reading** – 
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If you’ve been following this space the last couple weeks, you know I’m reading [Determined](https://www.powells.com/book/determined-a-science-of-life-without-free-will-9780525560999) by Robert Sapolsky. It’s heady stuff. Sapolsky would argue I was destined to read it. So this week I threw Sapolsky a curve by exercising (what I think of as my) free will and pulling completely different kinds of books off my shelf. Here are a couple (links go directly to the Internet Archive so you can read for free if you like):

[Jim Murray: The Last of the Best.](https://archive.org/details/jimmurraylastofb00murr_0) When I was a kid, I looked forward to going outside in the morning and bringing in my parents’ copy of the Los Angeles Times. I wasn’t after the funnies, though. I wanted to read the Sports section. Specifically, I wanted to read the columns of the greatest sportswriter of all time. 

[Fart Proudly](https://archive.org/details/fartproudlywriti0000fran) by Benjamin Franklin. As a proud southpaw, I was delighted to discover “A Petition of the Left Hand 1785.”

**Quote I’m pondering —**
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> **I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.**
> 
> **– Charles Bukowski**

  

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**David Preston**

Educator & Author

​[**https://davidpreston.net**​](https://davidpreston.net​)

Latest book: [**ACADEMY OF ONE**](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475859041/Academy-of-One-The-Power-and-Promise-of-Open-Source-Learning)

  

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_Header image: A semi-random pile of books in David Preston's home office. Via David Preston._

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*Originally published on [CURIOUS AF](https://paragraph.com/@curious_af/ai-is-velcro-and-kleenex-and-an-escalator-and-a-zipper)*
