{"id":4767,"date":"2004-03-20T13:33:08","date_gmt":"2004-03-20T17:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2004\/03\/20\/well-we-told-you-so\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:58:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:58:55","slug":"well-we-told-you-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2004\/03\/20\/well-we-told-you-so\/","title":{"rendered":"Well, We Told You So"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

We<\/EM>akend Special<\/EM><\/A>:  Techie jargon and early-adopter buzzwords <\/FONT><\/FONT>turn off<\/A><\/FONT> normal folk<\/A>.  The headlines from this year’s CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany, tell the tale:<\/FONT><\/DIV>
\n

\n

\n
Tech Fair Hawkers Woo the Geek-Wary<\/FONT><\/A> (A\/P, The Porterville Recorder, CA, 03-20-04) <\/FONT>
“Firms Dropping Jargon in selling gadgets<\/STRONG>” (A\/P, The Daily Gazette<\/A><\/EM>, Schenectady, NY, 03-20-03, at C2)<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
\n
Tech fair hawks wares to nongeeks<\/FONT><\/A>  (A\/P, Louisville Courier Journal, 03-20-04)<\/FONT>
<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV><\/FONT><\/DIV>
\n
Gadget fair offerings go beyond geekdom<\/FONT><\/A> (A\/P, Allentown [PA] Morning Call, 03-20-04)<\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
Savvy companies who want a broader appeal have figured it out.  As the A\/P article reports:<\/FONT><\/DIV>
\n

\n
 \"question  ” Sharp design and simplicity are in. Acronyms are out, along with data transfer speeds, kilobytes and megabytes as marketing tools.” <\/FONT><\/DIV>
\n

   ” At this year’s CeBIT technology fair, computer and telecoms companies are trying to muffle the jargon — aiming their pitches at people indifferent or even hostile to geektalk who still love the gadgets.” <\/DIV>
\n

    “‘The consumer is not buying these acronyms, the consumer is buying solutions’,” Rudi Lamprecht, head of Siemens’ mobile phone division, said as he introduced his company’s new phones. <\/DIV><\/FONT><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
Same things goes for the (we)blogosphere:  if we want the “we” to grow significantly and participate consistently, we need to put the “we” back in the term “weblog” and get rid of that ugly, little four-letter word.  (Hey, I haven’t been on this soapbox<\/A> in over a month<\/A>.  It feels good.)<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weakend Special:  Techie jargon and early-adopter buzzwords turn off normal folk.  The headlines from this year’s CeBIT technology fair in Hanover, Germany, tell the tale: Tech Fair Hawkers Woo the Geek-Wary (A\/P, The Porterville Recorder, CA, 03-20-04) “Firms Dropping Jargon in selling gadgets” (A\/P, The Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY, 03-20-03, at C2) Tech fair hawks wares to nongeeks  (A\/P, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-1eT","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13917,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4767\/revisions\/13917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}