A Law Against Word Pollution?
When Seth Godin points out that people can get "hung up on catch phrases and jargon that work great when everyone understands what we mean, but fail to bring understanding to outsiders. Yelling louder isn't always the answer. Changing your words might work better." I think of technobabble.
The story in his post sounds like a typical conversation between technologists and users. It is natural for the marketing departments of tech companies to create new jargon.
Perhaps a law is needed to restrain such companies from what is in effect word pollution? Words need to be carefully introduced once they have been reviewed by national (eg IEEE) and international committees (ISO) made up of users, technologists and vendors. It might slow down the spurious tech themes that are designed to relieve tech-vulnerable executives from their funds.
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Have you had the ‘good’ fortune to work on a standard committee? It is a rare standard indeed that is clear and coherent. Most standards seem to be crafted quite carefully to sustain the tech company’s market position or technical advantage, at a pace slower than global warming. I am afraid that the suggested cure may be worse than the original disease.
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Fair point. The creation of de jure standards is painfully slow and therefore is unlikely to work at market clockspeed.
Maybe they could fast track words, which should be somewhat shorter to process than say the Unix specification.
Possibly the advertsing standard bodies should take some responsibility as should Trade Mark organisations?
I am clutching at straws. However it is a problem that needs solving. I wouldnt want to live in a world where half my conversation was made up of ‘proprietary’ words.
The Astronomy, Pharma and Medical industries seem to be able to control their words. Perhaps we should leave it to the IT academics to manage tech buzzwords?!