I’m just off a webchat on technology and one of the biggest points that came out of it was that people are getting tired of the curious names that get used for technology. Seriously. We were discussing cloud, deployment, hybrids and all sorts of things and when I asked what the biggest drivers in the industry were going to be, “silly names” came up as a genuine answer.
It’s a fair point. The tech industry has all but sabotaged the English language. We have fuzzy logic. We have dongles. More recently we have phablets, we’ve seen discs pronounced as “scuzzy” and that’s before you get to Apples, Blackberrys, or Oranges and even Apricots if you’re a certain age.
That said, sometimes it’s prescient. In 1989 I asked my first editor the innocent question: “What’s a megaflop?” His answer, quick as you please, was “Your career so far…”
