This often happens with acronyms – a pet peeve of mine. In this case, however, terms themselves aren’t defined. I suppose the book predicates a certain audience profile and, based on that, feels there is no need. The book’s audience would be familiar with the terms. Myself, I think that’s a wrong approach.
One of the terms I keep seeing over and over is ubicomp. Finally, frustrated, I went searching for an explanation on the Internet. It turns out ubicomp is a neologism, a made up word based on two other words. It’s short for ubiquitous computing (“ubi” and “comp”).
The book uses both terms but never actually states the relationship. I guess it was assumed I would figure it out myself (which I obviously did).
But wouldn’t it have been easier to have just said “ubiquitous computing (ubicomp),” as the Wikipedia entry does?
(By the way, even if it had, I don’t believe the book gives an explanation for what ubiquitous computing is, so Wikipedia or some other source would have been required to figure out what was meant.)
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