Developments are inevitable
I have been out in cyberspace again, trying to find meanings for some of the expressions I get stuck on.
I wasn’t going to; I was going to give up. Then an old friend emailed me about my blog. She’s an editor too and she confessed that she doesn’t understand the words either. So I’m not the only one, I thought.
The only way to be happy, she advised me, is to “just check the spelling”. May be she’s right, I thought. She seems to be happy. But then I read on – she confessed more. She has worked for E&Y and said:
“I hope you’re not trying to edit something I originally wrote for them!”
I imagined her laughing as she said it, tossing her mane of dark hair. So, I thought. At what price happiness? Have those others got her under some spell, in their power? Has she gone over to the side of conspirators who are secretly laughing at editorial staff everywhere? The ones who invent expressions like ‘improvement levers’ and ‘technology imperative’?
I was at a low ebb. Perhaps I am all alone in this world of corporate speak. And if they’ve got my friend, how long before they get me?
I have to crack their code, understand their ways, know my enemy.
So I started by googling ‘technology imperative’. Many books have been written about this but it would take me some time to read them all.
Then I discovered this webpage, and I understood the words. It was written by some bloke at Aberystwyth University – an academic, but it’s still reasonably clear. It turns out a ‘technology imperative’ is actually a ‘technological imperative’, and it’s about technological developments being inevitable.
I was very excited. So it does mean something after all.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
Sounds like some learning has been a-happening.
Many years ago, in between setting things on fire and discovering stuff, I remember doing some similar learning. I was struggling with The Great Gatsby while my teacher was waxing lyrical [look it up] about Fitzgerald’s wonderful use of language in a passage where he described driving up a road lined with deferential palms. I remember thinking that Fitzgerald was a right £!$& for making me look up ‘deferential’ – my teacher refused to tell me what it meant because she was upset that I called Fitzgerald a £!$&. You can imagine my feelings about both the author and my teacher when I found out deferential meant “showing deference” – but what it really meant was that I had to look up another word! The English language can be a real mofo [look it up] at times…
It was a valuable lesson. I was able to picture the scene – I was always a very visual child – and I learnt a new word that has stuck with me ever since. Bet you never forget what ‘technology imperative’ means…
Now imagine a world where Fitzgerald simply described a road lined with palm trees – I would have missed out on the ability to express my lack of deference to figures of authority all over the world. Crap, hope my boss ain’t reading this…