The word buzzword is a buzzword
Please stop it. I'm getting so tired of this so called smartness of people for detecting and pointing at buzzwords. Every idea you try to explain these days using memes like long tail, web2.0, user generated content, or what have you,... gets reciprocated with your conversation partner pointing at the words in your discourse - is discourse a buzzword? - that sound like buzzwords. Speakers at seminars these days ask their audience for forgiveness when they use one of those words, or they avoid using those words, or they use the words anyway, always followed by "I know, it's a buzzword, but...". What on earth is going on here?
I think this cheap buzzword bashing is a typical effect of the way the internet is evolving. We are tapped more than ever in an unstoppable stream of conversations, thoughts and opinions through blogs, mails and publications. And people use more and more so called memes or buzzwords, because they are of great value in formulating thoughts in a well formed and short way. Memes allow you make shortcuts in your story. So these days you really prove the world that you're quite a smartass by showing that you are aware of the pool of memes that travel around in conversations on the net. By calling everything a buzzword, you affirm yourself as being connected. Usually, when you challenge them to come up with a new definition for the word they just coined as a buzzword, you quickly find out that they haven't got a clue. They haven't thought about that one, because that's not what buzzword bashing is all about.
Maarten Schenk once called blogposts brainfarts. Seems like people start to focus a bit too much on the scent of the farting.
Therefore: I think the word buzzword is a buzzword. And it' soooo Web2.0-ish to use it. ;-)
Update 2: As Tim Bormans pointed out in the comments, all credits due to Nicky Sulmon for the inspiration.
Update 3: I've included this picture from Blaugh.com
Comments
With thanks to Nicky S. for pointing that out. So I guess 'pervasive gaming' isn't a buzzword anymore then. :-) Thanks for the feedback.
I know! Let's do a buzzword bingo and see who wins
The recent PEW Internet study concluded something similar: That the term (web 2.0) has enjoyed such a constant morphing of meaning and interpretation is, in many ways, the clearest sign of its usefulness. This is the nature of the conceptual beast in the digital age, and one of the most telling examples of what Web 2.0 applications do: They replace the authoritative heft of traditional institutions with the surging wisdom of crowds.
Indeed, it has become less difficult to detect a buzzword than to grasp its meaning.
Here's another prediction: within a few months the new hype in the scene will be to demonize everybody who still dares to call "web 2.0" a buzzword. Probably again for all the wrong reasons...if detecting buzzwords has become a sport for the masses, doing the exact opposite will arouse a feeling of superiority. But I suppose it's the human thing to do, innit?
@tijs & Nicky,
Thanks for the very interesting comments. I think the constant morphing of the meaning of the meme Web2.0 is indeed a symptom of its usefulness. On the other hand, it reminds me a bit of the history of psychoanalysis. Freud's set of concepts had the advantage that they quickly became memes. The downside of this was that they quickly turned into concepts that were too hilarious to believe in. However, when you go back and read the original text, you discover that the definitions that were proposed by Freud were actually very refreshing and very thought provoking. Same goes with Web2.0: read Tim O'Reilly's seminal paper on web2.0 and discover that his definitions about architectures of participation, wisdom of the crowd and others are still the very essence of what this whole post-O'reilly web2.0 hype is all about.
(pfffew, weird rant, I know, but my head is suffering from lack of sleep ;-) )