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Technobilge - Part III (The Proof) v2.01

Coming from Australia is Michael Bloch who has this to say:

It seems that many of the new words introduced into the English language as a direct result of new technology and the commercialization of the Internet have made their way into web marketing… unfortunately. This phenomenon isn’t just occurring between programmers and web marketers but in the way that they carry out promotion of their clients and companies to others.
Here’s a slightly exaggerated example, altered to prevent a law suit being taken out against me..:
“through an inverted dynamic and proactive CRM process, we are a best of breed online company - a goal-directed, innovative digital firm which fast tracks cyber stickiness through turnkey solutions that guarantee targeted eyeballs using multiple streaming channels and viral e-services, providing the best ROI on your investment”
huh? Translation:
We are good and we know how to assemble impressive words into a paragraph that serves to inflate our own egos and of other pretentious clients while alienating everyone else. Oh yeah, did we mention that we can send you visitors who would be interested in your web site, real cheap?

This mind-numbing technobilge still prevails on thousands of websites and in brochures. I have begun recently to think that use of such claptrap could related to some form of insecurity or nervousness. This is another topic to investigate. Meanwhile the search for examples continues.

……..to be continued

Technobilge - Part III (The Proof Part I)

This article proves to me that manipulation of words into meaningless soundbites creates pointless conversation. Do all marketers, IT tekkies and finance management use acronyms and meaningless words to simply try to impress or deliberately confuse the audience?
Read this and see what can happen. You could be a victim of a nonsensical conversation next!

How gibberish put scientists to shame

PAGES of computer-generated gibberish, containing such gems as “contrarily, the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea”, have been accepted as an academic paper at a scientific conference in the United States in a victory for hoaxers.
Convinced that many scientific conferences would accept almost any research for the right fee, three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology celebrated yesterday the submission of their gobbledegook masterpiece, Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.

Jeremy Stribling, one of the students, said that he and two graduates were convinced that many academic conferences had few or no minimum standards because their sole purpose was to make money. “We decided to test the limits,” he said.

They wrote a computer program to generate nonsensical research papers, complete with “context-free grammar”, charts and diagrams. The program randomly selects and assembles sentences, then drops in impressive-sounding verbs and nouns. “Many scholars would agree that, had it not been for active networks, the simulation of Lamport clocks might never have occurred,” the paper asserts in its introduction.

“Certainly, the usual methods for the emulation of Smalltalk that paved the way for the investigation of rasterization do not apply in this area.” The students submitted Rooter, and a second paper, to the ninth World Multi-Conference on Systematics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

Mr Stribling said that they targeted the conference because it is notorious for sending e-mails to solicit admissions. An accepted paper usually attracts a fee. Nagib Callaos, a conference organiser, said that the paper was taken on a “non-reviewed” basis — meaning that there had been no feedback .

The students have raised more than $2,000 (£1,060) over the internet so they can attend the conference and give, as Mr Stribling said, “a completely randomly generated talk, delivered entirely with a straight face”.

An exercise in academic deceit

We ran four novel experiments:

(1) we dogfooded our method on our own desktop machines, paying particular attention to USB key throughput

(2) we compared throughput on the Microsoft Windows Longhorn, Ultrix and Microsoft Windows 2000 operating systems

(3) we deployed 64 PDP 11s across the Internet network, and tested our Byzantine fault tolerance accordingly and

(4) we ran 18 trials with a simulated WHOIS workload, and compared results to our courseware simulation

From Tim Reid in Washington

Read the report in full here at iScatterlings page called ROOTER

Technobilge Part II v2.47i

Remind me who said that it is not what you say but the way that you say it that is important. Bottom line for any conversation is the ability to not confuse the listener through use of what I call ‘clique slang’ (used by a select usergroup who prohibit admittance to their clique by ‘unsuitables’), or slick newly invented termininologies. You will know that the acronyms you use will not translate into Latin or Swahili and neither will the marketing terminology we take for granted.

My rant is born of frustration at the ‘assumptions’ our experts have that the person(s) to whom they are engaging in conversation, can comprehend every word, acronym and technobilge being spoken.

And speaking of assumptions, here in my opinion, is one of the world’s greatest and it pisses me off everyday!:

In their infinite wisdom, Microsoft engineers assumed that all owners of a desktop or laptop would need certain programmes whenever we fire up the computer. So, everyday when I push the green button to start my computer, (WARNING:exaggeration coming), I must go take a shower or make coffee while Windows automatically preloads hundreds of programmes just in case I’ll need them. Wrong!

I want my PC’s processing power running at maximum please. And also, choice is something Bill, Steve and Ozzie forget is still a prerequisite of consumerism. I want to choose and select when I open whatever application I require and leave it open and ready for me to use when and if I want. Why should some spotty engineer in Seattle assume I need x,y and z and screw up with the PC’s ability to function at the levels I bought the darned thing for?

….meanwhile back at the thread:

So if we can get rid of the ‘assumptions’ then the conversations we have will stand a better chance to leave more people better informed and happier for the chance to have learned something without continually reaching for a technical manual, textbook, dictionary or asking for explaination.

Next time you have to deliver a speech or do a corporate presentation, remember me, your arch cynic just waiting in the audience to cry Bingo! if I get a full suite of acronyms and technobilge I do not understand. I want you to captivate me in a conversation. I want you to leave your audience spellbound, and enriched and happier in their comprehension and understanding of the topic or results you present than they were before you spoke. Like Lionel Ritchie’s hit about Sunday mornings. Be smooth, simple, soft, cool and easy. If you are presenting poor quarterly results, please leave the audience motivated at the end to go and improve performances. Don’t leave them looking for the closest razorblade outlet.

Your presence and the words you use will determine the outcome of the audience reaction to your conversation content. I want to be able to stand and listen to YOU all day and still feel enlightened,motivated and refreshed at the end.

All participants in conversation must learn that unless they are captivating and easy to understand, whatever they deliver will bomb.

FINI To be continued….

Technobilge Part II v2.45a

What does this mean?:

Deep, opulent orange hue. A nose of caramel, pastry, spiced oranges and apples. There is certainly some botrytis here, both colour and nose confirming this. The palate has quite a savoury structure to it, with firm acidity cutting through the mouthfeel. But there is plenty of flavour too, of burnt toast, stewed apples, caramel and honey. Takes on a greater sweet intensity with time in the glass, and has a good length. More reminiscent of Tokaji than anything else. Just scrapes very good

Where do these okies come from? It describes how savoury a palate is. Sis! Who wants to eat a palate? Ag puke man! In which country are palates considered a delicacy? This is a wine being described for crissakes. Check, it’s nogal got a ‘mouthfeel’ en jislaaik it ’scrapes very good’!

So is it me or is there a disconnect somewhere that I seem to have missed or is there a special school where you are taught to write viticultural technobilge like the above?

Technobilge Part II v2.43

We all need to enter conversations everyday and we will all have our own reasons to want to do so. But we can only all comprehend what each other is saying if we do not confuse the listener by introducing our keen razor sharp on the button latest tekkiespeak into the conversation.

What I mean is - does ‘VHSDR’, DSL’ ‘Web 2.0′ or ‘Media 2.0′ translate into Xhosa, Zulu, Venda or Latin?

I recall being completely paralysed by a conversation with a telcoms engineer back in the 90’s. I did not understand a word he was saying (OK, I got the ‘it’s’, ‘the’, ‘and’ bits), but I was too petrified and shellshocked by the bombardment of the PHD Masters Buck Rogers Rocket Science with Einstein theory chucked in for extra added flavour spiel, to ask for an explanation!

I just ummed and aahhed and nodded my head in agreement (that I should not have nodded did not occur to me but his facial expression did impart I should have shook my head to mean ‘no’) and let him vent for 10 minutes. Hey, he was on a roll and who was I to prevent him spewing forth? Imagine Billy Crystal on speed hosting the Oscars ceremony and reciting the Dummies Guide How to Build a Saturn IV rocket without pause. Would the assembled audience of actors and actresses know what he was saying?

Before I forget, is there an Inner Chamber of the planet’s top scientists, engineers and marketers sitting in session each day to invent new acronyms? If not, then the world’s industries are populated with seriously disfunctional tekkies! Who comes up with this stuff? Do product designers and inventors spend their day inventing things just so they can come up with and win the Cool Acronym of the Month Award?

Please don’t spoil my allusion ;0)