Buzzwords Are Disposable, Human Beings Are Not

Photo by autan

Every month, in that location are new business organization books on the market promising "secrets & insights" into "exciting change" which is happening… right now! They often employ marvel-baiting phrases like "Larn how [BUZZWORD] is transforming the mode we communicate" or "Use the ability of [Some other BUZZWORD] to engage your customers".

Buzzwords include but aren't limited to "Web 2.0", "virtual worlds", and simply most annihilation with "social" and "media" in them — "social media", "social networks", and "rich media" are fair game. If you're smiling later reading that sentence, so y'all already know how true this is.

Buzzwords used badly

Just similar delicious nutrient is gladly eaten and digested before beingness excreted, buzzwords get used upward. They even go turned into silly games, like Buzzword Bingo. The importance of realizing this is: absolutely avoiding buzzwords is foolish and impractical. It limits your ability to chronicle to others, since many people, including some of your colleagues,do jump buzzword bandwagons. You tin't escape buzzwords if you desire to brand progress in a modern piece of work surround. A improve arroyo: control the words, employ them meaningfully, and don't insert them as vapid filler.

"The bones tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you lot tin control the significant of words, you can control the people who must use the words." –Philip K. Dick, awesome sci-fi writer

Buzzwords repackage classic notions in new forms

Ever since our ancestors hunted in the wilderness instead of making a trip to the supermarket, we've been telling stories. Whether scribbled on papyrus or streamed via YouTube, nosotros also love to share those stories — and the same stories proceed existence retold with contemporary twists. Why? Outset, because the core principles piece of work well and have stood the examination of time (otherwise those stories wouldn't continue to be popular). Second, while y'all may accept heard your fair share of stories, there are plenty of people who haven't, and marketers and others attain out to them, hoping to fill their mindshare (buzzword!) before competitors tin can. Which is why even though you lot may be annoyed by the 100th ambulation of an ad, in that location are going to be many people who've never seen/heard it before.

Photograph by zoomar

Seth Godin (pictured every bit activity figure above) is a main of stating the obvious when it'southward welcome, with unparalleled clarity and simplicity. This is why he's and then pop; try equally you might to rearrange what he's saying, information technology always comes back to the cadre principles, which he presents improve than 99% of everyone out there. I'm a fan of his teachings, and it's no surprise he makes a big bargain virtually storytelling in All Marketers Are Liars:

"Everyone is a liar. We tell ourselves stories because we're superstitious. Stories are shortcuts nosotros utilise because we're too overwhelmed past data to discover all the details. The stories we tell ourselves are lies that brand it far easier to alive in a very complicated earth."

Simply as humans learn from their mistakes, conform to meliorate, and pass lessons onto the next generation, function of what nosotros're continuing to spread are stories, an piece of cake way of transmitting ideas. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" to describe these shareable thoughts, but I bet he never foresaw it being used to spawn cumulative successions of lolcats and "Chocolate Pelting" parodies, pillars of user-generated, community-created content (OMG buzzword!).

Then why do buzzwords keep bursting to the front?

Since stories facilitate transmitting ideas, they serve as a retentivity assist. A popular mnemonic technique for remembering foreign words is to make up a story. For case, take the French give-and-take for grapefruit, "pamplemousse". Now, visualize this in your mind'south eye: a moose with a grapefruit-sized pimple. Vividly picture show the moose wailing out in pain and charging towards the md's office (or whatever it is adolescent moose do when they have bad acne). Did that assist y'all call up information technology? I think then! And while it wasn't À la recherche du temps perdu, it was notwithstanding a petty story.

Memory plays into the big picture here, because buzzwords are ofttimes tethered to the zeitgeist — what's happening at present. As homo beings, we have emotions. We also forget things, which messes with our emotions, and makes u.s.a. run into ex-relationships every bit being more bonny, while selectively forgetting why we bankrupt up in the first identify. And in repeating an feel multiple times, nosotros become desensitized to them — do yous remember the first time y'all ever surfed the Www compared to how you lot experience well-nigh information technology now? I confess I don't gawk in amazement daily similar my initial stretch of weeks trying out NCSA Mosaic and waiting minutes for animated GIFs to download on my 14.4k modem — and boy, that Virtual Louvre was really something! But if I lock myself in a quiet room and really, actually think of my first fourth dimension on the Web intensely, I can about feel waves, echoes of those initial moments.

The same is true for many human experiences. Buzzwords in context often reference our past and graft information technology with a new lingual sheen — wait closely at the Holden Efijy concept automobile: eye-catching with its plum coat…

Photo by Ian Muttoo

… and inspired by the original Holden FJ.

Photograph by Liam Ryan

Long story curt, similar cars paying homage to retro designs, buzzwords attract because they mix novelty with familiarity. Buzzwords assistance us to cope with "accelerating change" (arguably a buzzword!) by blending the old with the new, making the past not merely more perceptually exciting, but marketable likewise. Otherwise, we'd be in passive danger of (i) being bored and not caring or (two) being wayyyy also excitable and not well-grounded.

Humans don't alter, humankind does

Some things about the states are fundamentally the aforementioned and will be for a long time, unless we reach the Singularity sooner than expected. For effective purposes, we can consider our core principles every bit "permanent", as far dorsum as we can recall.

We love to be loved. When we discover delight, we oft share it with others. Nosotros're anxious and insecure (and have a hard time expressing this) and express dislike of young man humans more often than we should. In commutation, we try to celebrate our "unity" as a species, or what we think it should exist — like the Olympic Games. Even as the media morphs throughout time and we notice new means of crafting stories, ideas — buzzwords being a specific variant — continue to be sprouted. We will, sadly, often fight about the words framing those ideas from each of our express worldviews, instead of joining forces to advance what is infact the same idea seen in different ways.

I liken it to observers seated in a circle around a magnificent sculpture which looks different at every viewpoint. No ane person sees the whole sculpture, merely a fraction of angles. You lot an either choose to dispute that your view is the all-time and (incorrectly) represents the whole sculpture. Or, you can describe your office, encourage others to exercise the same, and anybody contributes to the whole vision. What will you choose?

You gotta see through the crap

A notable, buzzword-laden book is Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Irresolute the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. It's intriguing how books with similar titles similar Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the Earth and How You Can Join Them and Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies have appeared, reinforcing what I said about the same idea seen in different means. (And roll back to the first paragraph if yous're still laughing.)

I believe the ideas inside are smart ones to spread. Simply those titles are perfect examples of how to gussy upwardly "the same old" in a new dress.

When we lived in caves, nosotros literally often had "naked & clear conversations". Sheer survival was prized above diplomatic diction and textural embellishment ("political correctness" and "spin" to some). Today'southward story has different priorities but the same core principles: "blog" is a contraction of "weblog", which in turn is a glorified way to say "I have a diary/journal on the Internet". Which makes me think of teenage girls writing "dear diary", except it's an open book. If they're hostage about it, then that makes information technology naked, clear — or transparent (buzzword!).

With that understood, thebig idea here (imagine me growling this like a Neanderthal) is:

HUMANS Exist Man BEINGS! NO CRAP!

And the contemporary twist:

HUMANS Utilise MACHINES TO Exist More Man!

Not surprising, but people demand to exist reminded. It's something you lot'll hear over and over, and which you lot may've heard related to in a fairy tale called "The Emperor'due south New Clothes".

Buzzwords used badly (Vol. II)

Like those not-real clothes on the pretentious Emperor, don't be fooled by what'due south not actually in that location: words themselves are a liquid currency subject to much semantic argument, and a simple principle I recommend is to "sanity-check" yourself that there's actually substance backside what yous're saying or being told, and that y'all aren't deep inmental feces (wish information technology was a buzzword but I'grand 'fraid it won't catch on) similar the Emperor was.

Buzzwords used emptily are wasteful slop to chop: if mention of a word isn't going to get you ahead, don't use it. Instead of technobabble and abstract vaguery, selection a more understandable word. Respect Hemingway.

"Web 2.0" is one of the worst offenders, because 1000s of people have their own conflicting definitions of what it is, then barrel heads when using it, considering they never agreed to begin with. Of amusing annotation at the top of that wikiality (another buzzword!) is:

Warning: Web ane.0 is inheritently (sic) different from Web two.0! Why does this redirect?

Possibly information technology'due south because they're more like than some would take usa believe. Distinguishable, similar bands of color on a rainbow, yet face-to-face. :)

Photo by Torley (me) showing virtual earth (

buzzword!) Second Life

Another horrendous-withal-hilarious example of word wars are the arguments concerning 100s of electronic music styles, which you tin can hear in Ishkur's guide (I'm still waiting for him to release version 3). If yous've ever been in "the scene" every bit I take, it's both embarrassing and shameful to hear two technosnobs get into a verbal ball over whether a piece of music is "trance", "progressive firm", or "minimal melodic techno". I often say, "If it'southward a wonderful rails, then information technology's all of those… and fifty-fifty peradventure more than." That counterintuitively tends to derange, and immediately identifies express, not-seeing-the-whole-rainbow thinking in others.

My elementary, ongoing approach to buzzwords calls for dynamic residuum: allow words to atomic number 82 you lot to new places. Recall, buzzwords are disposable: some have keen longevity, but the majority are going to fade. "Horseless wagon" was a buzzword dorsum in its time, and encounter how far nosotros've come with our cars like that Efijy?

Lastly, never forget: the "buzz" in "buzzword" comes from bees. Bees fly from blossom to flower, pollinating and spreading what they carry as they proceed. They don't stay nonetheless, and neither should yous.

Fizz on!

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Source: https://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/buzzwords-are-disposable-human-beings-are-not.html

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