As 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 sceptical hunter-gatherer they needed to upgrade. It’s the nature of the business. Some buzzwords are just so annoying though that they’ve just got to go, and here’s six that are on our list.

1. Six annoying tech buzzwords
that should be retired
As 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
Image courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

2. Cloud computing
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.
Image courtesy of iprostocks / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
To the cloud? Umm, okay…

3. Big Data
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?
Image courtesy of sheelamohan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

4. Web 2.0
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
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.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

5. Clicktivism
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.
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.”
Image courtesy of xedos4 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

6. Post-PC Era
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. Image courtesy of Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

7. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)
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
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.
Image courtesy of twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net