[Sigia-l] Semantic Technologies - Jan. 25th Taxonomy Community Call

[andrew at friendlymanual.com]

Quoting Stewart Dean <stew8dean at hotmail.com>:

> Can people write things like that with a straight face? It's as clear as mud
> and essentially written in business speak in it's worst form. In short, if
> the people behind this idea can't write intelligent English instead of
> advertorial gibberish why should anyone take it seriously?

Hi Stewart,

not that I am condoning, just working towards understanding: people write stuff
like this because there are other people (like
wanting-desperately-to-be-tech-savvy middle and upper management) who will lap
it up.

Mr King said "write to your audience, everything else is bull". This was not a
great fit of text-to-audience perhaps. But in other audiences, this kind of
thing is just what they want to see. "Keep hitting me about the head and
shoulders with those big words used out of context, man, I love it. Throw in
some undeniable motherhood statements. Baffle me.".

Anecdotally, this kind of language was so common during the dot-bomb dark ages
that it was the rule rather than the exception amongst technical salespeople
addressing project management in Australian government. I got a lot of work
sitting in on presentations then "de-bulling" it for my clients after the
salesfolk went away.

Cheers, Andrew

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