Six annoying tech buzzwords

that should be retiredAs long as there’s been technology, there’s been annoying buzzwords.

No doubt some enterprising cave-person marketed the “Club 2.0” to convince a skeptical hunter-gatherer they needed to upgrade. It’s the nature of the business.

Some buzzwords are so annoying though that they’ve just got to go, and here are six that made our list.

By Jeff Jedras

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While the term cloud computing may have once meant something definitive (perhaps back when it was called software as a service), it has become so widely used and misused that it has become largely meaningless.

I’m unable to trace the exact time of death; it was either when I received a press release for a “cloud-enabled printer” (it had a WiFi connection) or when Microsoft launched its (nothing really to do with the) cloud commercials.

To the cloud? Umm, okay…

Cloud computing

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Much like cloud computing, big data is another newly invented buzzword for an older technology concept – trying to analyze all the data companies have available to make more informed business decisions.

We used to talk about analytics, and about structured and unstructured data. Now though, it’s all just big data.

We even have “big data” appliances when big data isn’t really a technology per se, but rather a problem (remember the data deluge?).

And anyway, if there’s big data, what’s little data, exactly?

Big Data

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While cloud computing and big data actually meant something, at least at some point, what does Web 2.0 mean exactly? It seems to have been birthed entirely devoid of concrete meaning – a marketer’s dream. It’s a web experience that’s a version better than Web 1.0, one supposes.

But we seem to have been stalled on Web 2.0 for some time. If we’re

Web 2.0

not ready for Web 3.0, can we at least get an update to Web 2.1 to patch a few bugs? I’ll tell you one thing though. If they decide to change the naming regime and launch Web Vista, I’m waiting for the first service pack before upgrading.

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Clicktivism refers to the phenomenon of social activism moved from the streets to the online world.

But while the web (or Web 2.0, if you prefer) can be a useful tool of engagement, for many the online social activism has devolved into a phenomenon where many just click “like” on a Facebook page and feel like they’ve accomplished something meaningful for social change.

Clicktivism

And as the #Kony2012 case showed, many often know little about an issue beyond 140 characters before they tweet. Hence, the partner term for clicktivism: slacktivism. See also: hactivism. To quote the late John Lennon, “ism ism ism.”

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We’ve been told in recent years that tablets will kill the personal computer. Tablets follow in the footsteps of netbooks, which were to have threatened the laptop, and laptops, which were to have threatened the desktop.

And at some point, device convergence (remember that?) was going to replace all our devices with a smartphone. And yet, the number of pieces of technology I use every day keeps going up, not down.

The PC isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either; not many productivity users can live today by tablet alone. It will remain the anchor of our digital worlds for now. PC-Plus is a far more accurate buzzword, so let’s begin running that one into the ground now too.

Post-PC Era

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An evolution of consumerization (of IT), a previous annoying buzzword, BYOD also once referred to something specific – people using their own personal device (usually a laptop or smartphone) as their primary business device as well.

Like all good buzz terms though, it’s been co-opted. Now it seems to

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

include both user-owned devices as well as corporate-owned devices where the user can pick the device they’re issued.

While a CFO may like BYOD, speak to the IT department that has to manage these devices and they’ll tell you it’s one challenging buzzword.

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