XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: peter@pmoylan.org   
      
   On 13/11/25 06:02, Richard Tobin wrote:   
   > In article , occam   
   >  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Can I ask - when was your university department renamed to   
   >> Informatics? (My bet is on the 1990s, the start of the internet.)   
   >   
   > It was 1998, and didn't really have anything to do with the   
   > internet. Several departments were merged (including AI, CS, and   
   > CogSci) and they probably wanted a word that didn't have too specific   
   > a meaning.   
      
   Those too-frequent universiity mergers have a lot to answer for. All too   
   often they are based on shaky logic.   
      
   One big change at my university (Newcastle, NSW) was when the Faculty of   
   Mathematics was abolished. At that time the Faculty had three   
   departments: methematics, statistics, and computer science. The plan was   
   that mathematics would go into the Faculty of Science (not too   
   illogical), statistics would go into the Faculty of Medicine   
   (questionable), and computer science would go into the business school.   
      
   The CS people were horrified. They had nothing in common with the   
   business people. Moverover, they felt that their reputation would be   
   damaged if they were to be given responsibility for the Mickey Mouse   
   subject called Info Science 101.   
      
   We in Electrical Engineering then proposed that CS be merged with the EE   
   department, and that's what happened. It wasn't that we felt that CS was   
   an engineering discipline. We just wanted to rescue the CS people from a   
   fate worse than death.   
      
   --   
   Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org   
   Newcastle, NSW   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)