Animal, vegetable, fruit or... machine?

What do you think of when you hear the word 'Blackberry'?


For me, the word evokes images of a deeply hued purple matched with a sweet acidic taste. Squishy, round berries. Stained fingers. Bright green leaves. The pain when the thorns prickle your arms. Waging those small, personal battles with the blackberry bushes to momentarily conquer nature and release the fruit from it's thorny captors. Warm pies fresh from the oven, apples, cinnamon, fresh mornings and autumnal colours.

These associations are all inherently based on the season in which blackberries are gathered and taste their best.

Now I acknowledge that I may not be the most technologically advanced human being ever to walk the earth. I am probably quite naive about the proliferation of the various new and exciting forms of communication device that seem to sweep nations with a force not unlike a Spartan invasion. (I do, however, know what an iphone is). But I was still fairly shocked when, trying to search for a picture of a blackberry recently, google images turned up this result:


In fact, it takes 18 pages of these images before you come to one image of anything even remotely resembling a fruit!

They don't call it the 'crack-berry' for nothing, clearly.

Is anyone else surprised by this? What do you immediately associate with Blackberry? Or Apple? Or Orange?

Do you think we are losing the natural and seasonal connotations of words that have been appropriated by business? And what effect does this have on us?