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> He asked me if "technologies" is really a word...and I said I think so...but
> it's probably not the best word we could use.
Thanks Kevin, this is an interesting point. It seems like 'technology'
may be going the same way as other words hijacked and rendered
meaningless by business language; you all know the ones - leverage,
synergy, issues, partnering, and the recently deceased 'solutions'.
Technology and solutions are too close to being buzzwords for my
liking, it's probably their close association with the internet boom,
but even then, sensible industries are also beginning to misuse them:
we now have the humble mattress described as 'the latest in sleeping
technologies', dog training has become 'advanced canine technology',
you can even get DVDs on 'gardening solutions' from Amazon.
The trouble is vagueness (and silliness). When you have companies
describing their products as end-to-end technology solutions, you can
be sure that they don't really know what it's for, who is going to use
it and why. I'll hazard a guess that pre-internet industries didn't
use the word technology with as much enthusiasm as we do now. I would
say that to preserve its proper meaning and usefulness, it ought to be
used a little more carefully. I suppose we have a vested interest in
this since our job titles are a derivative of the word - when
technology becomes a vague term to describe anything from a matress to
a trained dog, a technical writer is what exactly?
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