Saw this article on ABC News earlier this week called 12 Words You Can Never Say in the Office. (Thanks for the link, @charleslord.) Thought that was pretty great, as I’d been thinking along the same lines earlier this week– sometimes you can tell how old someone is just by the terms they use in their technobabble.
So here are my additions to ABC News’ list of geezery techno-words:
- Snail mail– No one calls postal service mail “snail mail” anymore. Just “mail” is fine. We know email is a completely different thing.
- Web 2.0– Yeah, I get that you think this idea is still pretty cutting edge, or maybe you’re not quite sure what it means yet, but it’s played out now. It used to refer to a brand new way of thinking about interacting on the web, but it’s not a brand new way anymore, and everyone’s doing it. So skip calling it “Web 2.0.” No one will be impressed.
- Conference bridge– I guess once upon a time you had to do all kinds of magic with your phone system to dial a bunch of people in to a conference call, but now we have these nifty dial-in numbers that do it for us, so you can just call it a conference call, or a dial-in number. “Conference bridge” sounds like a game Lucy and Ethel would play while plotting their next scheme to get in Ricky’s show.
- Home phone number– Don’t even bother asking for it, because a lot of people don’t have it anymore. Hey, we pay for our cell phones already, we get coverage at our house, so why would we pay for a home phone number, too?
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- Image via Wikipedia
Wireless– Mostly this one is just too general. Everything is wireless anymore: computers, phones, cell phones, internet… So no one’s going to know what you’re talking about if you just refer to “wireless.” You’ll have to say “cell service” or “WiFi” or “cordless phone,” depending on what you mean.
Can you think of any I missed? Lay ‘em on me in the comments!
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