Also, I wrote this earlier: “Now, I haven’t read a lot about Web 2.0, but it sounds an awful lot like a buzzword for people to justify hiring people who use phrases like ‘Web 2.0.’”
I really wasn’t kidding. I’ve been hanging around the web for a while now. I remember when we started NRO and we had all of these meetings with people who were going to tell us how everything we were doing was wrong. Most of these consultants came in and used a bunch of language that we’d never heard before, but it was so obvious that the hucksters we’re using them just so they’d sound like they were experts when they explained them to us. But once you quizzed a bit deeper, you discovered that the buzzphrases were all there was.
When I worked in television the same dynamic was at work. Good consultants had actual contacts and could help you build relationships. B.S. consultants threw a lot of terms at you and little else. My dad used to regale me with the monumental hucksterism of the McKinsey types who would come in and draw a lot of boxes on the grease board and drop a lot of buzzwords about Maximizing Core Mission This and Shedding External That. At the end Pops would say something like: “So we should sell more of the stuff we’re good at selling and less of the stuff we’re bad at selling” and the 23 year-old would exclaim, “Exactly!”
“For this we needed a consultant?” would be my Dad’s response.
I think the strategic conceit of creating new buzzwords and jargon to protect bureaucrats, consultants and ideologues is one of the more fascinating constants of the human condition (I think Vaclav Havel wrote a play on this and Orwell was obviously a hero in the battle against this sort of thing.). If you don’t know the lingo, you’re on the outside. But often the only thing that justifies you’re outsider status is your ignorance of the lingo. Intellectuals, obviously, are the greatest culprits when it comes to using words as bouncers (I wrote a column about it here a long time ago), but as we move deeper into the New Economy, it’s only going to get worse.
Update: From a reader:
Subject: pot, kettle?
“but as we move deeper into the New Economy…”
Loved the disquisition on the hubris of buzzwords, but
isn’t “New Economy” a hollow buzz phrase too?