Buzzwords of the year - Workstyles - Column

Home Office Computing, Dec, 1993 by Nick Sullivan

I recently met a high-placed corporate executive who said he was suffering from executive burnout and was going home to start a virtual corporation. I wondered if that meant his job had been outsourced due to a re-org and that he was going to ride the information highway home to chill for a nanosecond in a wireless world. Then I realized that when you speak with buzzwords, there's no way of telling. The meaning is intentionally vague, hidden by the overwhelming importance of the words. You're not supposed to know what's meant; and if you ask, you risk looking stupid.

His choice of buzzwords was also interesting in that he combined executive burnout, a 1980s term, with virtual corporation, a 1990s term. Wide-ranging buzzspeak! Do you ever hear about burnout anymore? No, you've either got a job or you don't; either way, you work 60 hours a week. The entire country is burned out, so who cares about executives. Other relics of the 1980s: super Mom and super Dad.

The rapid technological changes of the past decades have produced a plethora of buzzwords and phrases, starting with Alvin Toffler's future shock and electronic cottage followed by digital, graphical, point and click, and multitasking. We've superseded downsizing and rightsizing because they're not nice things to do to people (and they didn't always cut costs like they were supposed to). The new, improved, and alternative corporate buzz-speak is re-org (reorganization, in case you were afraid to ask).

As usual, 1993 was a great year for buzzwords about technology-driven work. Virtually anything with virtual is hot, but virtual corporation is the best. It's slowly risen through the-ranks, at times tugging at the coattails of virtual reality, at others pulling virtual reality along.

Virtual reality is the act of 'donning what looks like beekeeper's garb and playing golf at Pebble Beach without actually going. However, the cost of the virtual experience is about the same as the actual greens fee, so why not play by the ocean? Speaking of virtual golf, the first annual computer golf tournament is being held in Florida next month. You'd think they'd hold the virtual tournament in Alaska and do the real thing in Florida, but that ozone hole has knocked us silly.

So silly, it's gotten to the point where the only real thing anyone does anymore is go to the bathroom. Everything else is virtual, which makes sense in a culture that thinks watching TV is an activity.

For example, all kinds of people running small businesses think they are running virtual corporations. In fact, they are simply trying to sound important and superior. To be sure, a full-fledged company--with accountant, lawyer, business manager, manufacturer, and so on, all working from different places--is a virtual corporation. It has no central office--there's no there, there.

The rest of the virtual wannabes (passe buzz) are just trying to make a living the old-fashioned way--by getting a $5,000 contract, hiring someone else to do it for $2,500, and pocketing the difference.

Another sizzling buzzword this year is information highway (or data superhighway, take your pick). Clinton and Gore made it hot during the 1992 campaign, and since then not a day has gone by without a reference to it, as various cable TV and telephone companies form strategic alliances aimed at cornering the conduit into your house. Ingress and egress, that's what it's all about. What goes in and out of what hole, wire, or cable no one knows. Just couch it in buzz, and you'll be safe.

Clunkers? For years, ISDN (Integrated Services Data Network), the digital, high-speed voice, video, and data service, has flirted with buzzword status, but acronyms rarely make it. Remember ROM and RAM? They're too precise; buzz must be vague, a big umbrella concept. On that basis, I don't think PDA (personal digital assistant) will make it either. And marketers are trying in vain to make a buzz about multimedia, but it's too reminiscent of film projectors in high school. Interactive TV, now that's buzz. But what's the buzz all about?

Up-and-comers? Wireless! Just say it, no one will question you. And self-liquidating. That means, I don't want to spend any money. But at least we're still speaking English--not Pascal or some object-oriented language.

NICK SULLIVAN, editorial director of special projects, wishes each and all a safe, happy, and relaxing holiday season.