Home truths about technobabble and social media

A few weeks back I was getting a bit over-lyrical with a group of friends about the world-changing potential of blogs and other social media, and the buzz from conversations with other enthusiasts around the globe. Words like feeds, tagging, FLOSS and folksonomy may have come up ... and ideas like crowdsourcing and collective intelligence. One of the group (was it Kevin?) remarked "you are an elite, aren't you" ... which was rather challenging, since the point of the conversation was how helpful these technologies can  be in creating greater transparency, openness, challenging hierarchies and so on.
I'm reminded of this because over at Podnosh Nick Booth, reflecting on another post about must-know words, takes us to task for technobabble:

I consider most of this language to be downright rude. They are what I call “home words”: the ones you can get away with only in ‘private’. It’s the sort of language which convinces others that a normal human has become a techno-evangelist (oops), at best a geek, at worst a raving lunatic and certainly to be avoided. So in the world of charities and the internet which are out ‘home words’? What will alienate rather than stimulate?
Here are my five starters…
nptech (tags don’t belong in the real world)
vlogcast (unh?)
blogosphere (we want them to join it, not run screaming)
user generated content (worse ugc)
trackback

However, as Steve Bridger points out in Social media is distinct from traditional media

We do still need to differentiate between the “old” broadcast way of doing things and the “new”, more conversational.

Steve B is commenting on a post by widely-read blogger Steve Rubel:

Today, Steve calls time on “a bunch of terms” he signals are now completely unnecessary. These include “social media,” “user generated content” and “consumer generated media.”

Steve R says:

The problem with all of these balkanized phrases is that they connote that the content created by digitally empowered individuals is somehow bush league. It's like we're a separate entity from the rest of the so-called "mainstream" journalists, filmmakers, photographers, etc. who do what we do and get paid more for it. We sit in a special dish like leftover meatloaf so we need a special name. If you use these phrases you're unintentionally perpetuating that myth.

And adds:

The fact is that everyone who is contributing to the dialogue - be it in video, text or photos - has earned the right to be called media. Let's can the compartmentalization and recognize once and for all the world has changed. We are all media - period.

I think there are number of different issues here.
My friend raising the issue of elites was reminding me that it's a bit dodgy claiming you are doing good in the world, by promoting empowering tools, if  those you aim to benefit can't understand what you are talking about. You risk becoming yet another self-serving bunch of smug "experts". I think Nick's points are in line with that, as one might expect from someone whose podcasting focusses on helping people share conversations more widely - rather than just do smart interviews.
Steve B (and many of those commenting on Steve R's item) believe it is important to have some different words for media that is two-way rather than broadcast, and participatory. Oops, another Home Word. Steve R seems to want to join the mainstream media that Nick (former BBC) and I (former Evening Standard) chose to leave, and which Steve B I think wants to challenge.
All this is currently very relevant, since instead of musing on these matters I should be actually developing an A-Z of social media and networking over on the socialmedia wiki. Here's an earlier mainly non-tech one I did on networking. I think writing this piece has increased my motivation.
Meanwhile I need to decide what to tag this. I see that Nick is using nptech, nptechuk, technobabble, homewords ....

Technorati Tags: nptech, nptechuk

Comments

[Graham Lally]

A few things I've been reading recently have mentioned the use of language, and I certainly hold to the view that language = power (hence, e.g. the establishment of the "Queen's English" is at the same time both a top-down imposition of power, but also the creation of a new standard - a feature of language that repeats endlessly).

I'd be interested to see stats or discussion on either/both:

a). the popularity of all these terms over time, a bit like Google's zeitgeist.
b). how people that aren't "part of the revolution", as it were - the people we'd like to push this technology out to - refer to these things. I suspect they just use it, and that brand names are more important than "independent" terms. (For instance, many people know what "MySpace" is, but not necessarily what a "social networking service" is.)

There are so many ways of thinking about this, but I'll keep this one short ;)

[Joe]

I like your blog, it’s always fun to come back and check what you have to tell us today.