I just attended a meeting at the West Group training center here in
San Francisco, where they announced their new combination (Premise,
Folio, Westlaw) search engine. The name of this new product is Trinity.
Trinity is the code name for the test blast of the world's first
atomic bomb in New Mexico July 1945. J. Robert Oppenheimer named it
after Donne's sonnet "Batter my heart, three-pronged god". Given the
legacy of Trinity - real and metaphorical nuclear clouds - I hope West
Group will rethink the name of their proposed product.
An excellent film, The Day After Trinity, about Oppenheimer and the
project, has been shown several times on PBS and may be
available in your public library's video collection.
As I'm not religious I won't address the appropriateness of naming the
search engine after a concept central to Christianity.
Granted that as those involved in West's Trinity project probably
weren't born when Trinity occurred, they may not have been aware of the
horrible historical connotations of the name. We are however all living
with the terrible consequences of the development of atomic bombs.
Jane W. Evans janevans@netcom.com
California Court of Appeal First District
303 2nd St., Ste. 600 South
San Francisco CA 94107
415 396-9758
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