PwC learned me a new phrase today: digital spaghetti!
dig•it•al spa•ghet•ti– the art of creating new words that describe something technical to educate your friends and co-workers; helpful when playing buzzword bingo in your next emerging technology discussion. Digital spaghetti terms share a characteristic of being relatively new and lack a universally agreed upon definition.
Soooo… digital spaghetti is digital spaghetti?
The article on the PwC Emerging Technology blog is, obviously, about the language of emerging technology:
With the evolution of anything – especially technology because it changes so fast – the vocabulary needed to describe the latest concepts is continuously evolving. Think about the last meeting you attended where emerging technology concepts were mentioned. Did everyone have the exact same definition of what those terms really defined? In some cases, these concepts are being used incorrectly and/or interchangeably when it’s important to understand the nuances of how each technology is an enabler of the others.
Axiom: When there’s a lack of reality coupled with a lot of talking, there tends to be mass misinformation.
In an attempt to untangle a bowl of digital spaghetti, let’s describe 3 terms that are peaking in today’s marketing hype cycle: The Internet of Things, Wearable Computing, and Context-Aware Computing.
Sigh. Why, you guys, why?!
They go on to explain The Internet of Things (not to be confused with machine-to-machine or M2M, which also was once a thing), Wearables, and Context-Aware Computing. And then we get:
Understanding the relationships and differences among concepts is important; what’s more important is that they do not bog down you and your team. Think of definitions as placeholders that describe something. Because everyone’s organization is different, successfully navigating these concepts, as well as future ones, means agreeing on how you want to use them. A successful emerging technology team must agree how they should be defined for their organization—and then normalize around the concepts.
If you are not successful defining emerging technology terms, you still may win buzzword bingo – but you won’t win your audience, and you may end up with digital indigestion.
Did someone say buzzword bingo? We've got you.
