High Tech Terms
On March 17, 2010, the Global Language Monitor presented the Most Confusing High Tech Buzzwords of the decade (2000–2009).
1. HTTP — HyperText Transfer Protocol is used for HTML (HyperText Markup Language) files. 2. Flash — As in Flash Memory. “Flash’ is easier to say than “ I brought the report on my EEPROM chip with a thin oxide layer separating a floating gate and control gate utilizing Fowler-Nordheim electron tunneling”. 3. God Particle – The Higgs boson, thought to account for mass. The God Particle has eluded discovery since its existence was first postulated some thirty years ago. 4. Cloud computing – Distributing or accessing programs and services across the Internet. (The Internet is represented as a cloud.) 5. Plasma (as in plasma TV) — Refers to a kind of television screen technology that uses matrix of gas plasma cells, which are charged by differing electrical voltages to create an image. 6. IPOD – Apple maintains that the idea of the iPod was from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. 7. Megapixel – One million pixels or picture elements. 8. Nano – Widely used to describe anything small as in nanotechnology. Like the word ‘mini’ which originally referred to the red hues in Italian miniature paintings, the word nano- is ultimately derived from the ancient Greek word for ‘dwarf’. 9. Resonate – Not the tendency of a system to oscillate at maximum amplitude, but the ability to relate to (or resonate with) a customer’s desires. 10. Virtualization – Around since the late ‘70s, virtualization now applies to everything from infrastructures to I/O.
On November 19, 2008 Global Language Monitor announced the most confusing yet frequently cited high tech buzzwords of 2008 to be cloud computing, green washing, and buzzword compliant followed by resonate, de-duping, and virtualization. Rounding out the Top Ten were Web 2.0, versioning, word clouds, and petaflop. The most confusing Acronym for 2008 was SaaS (software as a service).
On 14 October 2007 GLM released a list of the most confusing high tech terms and buzzwords. The words included: iPod, flash, cookie, nano and kernel, followed by megahertz, cell (as in cell phone), plasma, de-duplication and Blu-Ray. Other terms being tracked included terabyte, memory, core, and head crash. The most confusing acronym was found to be SOA, for service-oriented architecture, an acronym which IBM published a book about.
The studies are released each year on the anniversary of the cookie, the invention that made the World Wide Web practical for widespread surfing, communication, and e-commerce.
Read more about this topic: Global Language Monitor
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or terms:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)