Language of technology stirs debate

28.08.2009
Our recent list of "" sure hit a raw nerve with readers.

The story was a lighthearted look at how buzzwords change over time. From the George Carlin reference in the headline to the embedded link to our IT geezer quiz, the story was meant to give readers a laugh about how phrases come in and out of favor among tech vendors and users.

Our list included a dozen words and phrases that were once hyped by tech vendors, consultants, industry analysts and the media (yes, Network World included) but aren't as widely used today. We also came up with replacement terms that seem to be gaining popularity.

But some of our readers -- particularly the readers of Business Week and Yahoo News, both of which syndicated the article -- took the list way more seriously than we intended. We've been flooded with feedback, much of it critical, some of it positive.

In fairness, there's one term that we flubbed, and that's "intranet." Readers strongly defended the term, saying that while "intranet" isn't nearly as broadly used as it was in the '90s, it's still used in IT shops to refer to internal HTML pages.

"I understand when you say that most don't use [the terms intranet and extranet] like they did in the 90s, however they have since mutated into different meaning," writes reader Steve in Seattle. "An intranet now is basically an internal web page that only locally authenticated internal network users can get to. Granted, this depends on the security of your internal network, but the term intranet is used all the time."