“Daemons” really feels like a bad choice of name to me. I think the pitch “you can have a bunch of daemons advising you and prompting you to do things” would sound better if they were called almost anything else.
For a prototype like this, which involves things like ‘API keys’, some terminological confusion over ‘daemons’ is the least of one’s concerns in terms of general public usability. And ‘demon’ in computing does have the useful connotation of implying they can run asynch or in the background.
But if one wanted to get rid of it, I would suggest just ‘character’. It seems to work for Character.ai (which has a userbase of… god knows how many millions of people at this point), is transparent and without much misleading connotation, and covers all of the roles from ‘daemon’ to ‘courtier’ to ‘adviser’ to ‘familiar’ to ‘consultant’ to...
Personally I like it and didn’t have the association to “demons” at all, probably because I’ve seen this comic go around enough times to make the distinction clear.
Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of the same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts, chthonic heroes, spirit guides, forces of nature, or the deities themselves.
I’ll register that I like the name, and think it’s an elegant choice because of those two references both being a fit (plus a happy little call-out to The Golden Compass). If the app gets wildly popular it could be worth changing, but at this point I imagine you’re at least four orders of magnitude away from reaching an audience that’ll get weirded out by them being called dæmons.
I’m aware of those references, but in popular culture the strongest association of the word, by far, is to evil spirits that trick or tempt humans into doing evil. And the context of your program further encourages that interpretation because “giving advice” and “prompting humans” are both iconic actions for evil-spirit-demons to perform.
Even for people who understand your intended references, that won’t prevent them from thinking about the evil-spirit association and having bad vibes. (Nor will it prevent any future detractors from using the association in their memes.)
And I suspect many ordinary people won’t get your intended references. Computer daemons aren’t something the typical computer-user ever encounters personally, and I couldn’t point to any appearance of Greek daimons in movies or video games.
“Daemons” really feels like a bad choice of name to me. I think the pitch “you can have a bunch of daemons advising you and prompting you to do things” would sound better if they were called almost anything else.
Maybe “courtiers” or “familiars”?
For a prototype like this, which involves things like ‘API keys’, some terminological confusion over ‘daemons’ is the least of one’s concerns in terms of general public usability. And ‘demon’ in computing does have the useful connotation of implying they can run asynch or in the background.
But if one wanted to get rid of it, I would suggest just ‘character’. It seems to work for Character.ai (which has a userbase of… god knows how many millions of people at this point), is transparent and without much misleading connotation, and covers all of the roles from ‘daemon’ to ‘courtier’ to ‘adviser’ to ‘familiar’ to ‘consultant’ to...
Personally I like it and didn’t have the association to “demons” at all, probably because I’ve seen this comic go around enough times to make the distinction clear.
It’s a nod to ancient Greek mythology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimon
Also nodding to its use as a term for certain kinds of computer programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)
I’ll register that I like the name, and think it’s an elegant choice because of those two references both being a fit (plus a happy little call-out to The Golden Compass). If the app gets wildly popular it could be worth changing, but at this point I imagine you’re at least four orders of magnitude away from reaching an audience that’ll get weirded out by them being called dæmons.
I’m aware of those references, but in popular culture the strongest association of the word, by far, is to evil spirits that trick or tempt humans into doing evil. And the context of your program further encourages that interpretation because “giving advice” and “prompting humans” are both iconic actions for evil-spirit-demons to perform.
Even for people who understand your intended references, that won’t prevent them from thinking about the evil-spirit association and having bad vibes. (Nor will it prevent any future detractors from using the association in their memes.)
And I suspect many ordinary people won’t get your intended references. Computer daemons aren’t something the typical computer-user ever encounters personally, and I couldn’t point to any appearance of Greek daimons in movies or video games.
Being familiar with daemons in the computing context, I perceive the term as whimsical and fairly innocuous.
Advisors, interlocutors, consultants, …