corporate jargon equals verbal play doh
ed yong • What Counts as Seeing
And yet it should be possible to gaze into this alphabet soup and divine patterns. Our attraction to certain words surely reflects an inner yearning. Computer metaphors appeal to us because they imply futurism and hyperefficiency, while the language of self-empowerment hides a deeper anxiety about our relationship to work — a sense that what we’re
... See moreMolly Young • Why do corporations speak the way they do?
My generic career advice for young people is that if at all possible, you should aim to work on something that no one has a word for. Spend your energies where we don’t have a name for what you are doing, where it takes a while to explain to your mother what it is you do. When you are ahead of language, that means you are in a spot where it is mor
... See moreKevin Kelly • Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist
And so with every exchange, you have to acknowledge a reality where words like optionality and deliverable could be just as solid as blimp and pretzel. What happens if you ask a Megan or a Steph Korey or an Adam Neumann what they mean? I imagine a box with a series of false bottoms; you just keep falling deeper and deeper into gibberish. The meanin
... See moreMolly Young • Why do corporations speak the way they do?
While I do agree that many areas of interaction, like... See more
10 whimsical words coined by Lewis Carroll
This creativity isn't limited to people I admire or agree with: anti-vaxers have a... See more
Cory Doctorow • Pluralistic: 11 Apr 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Beyond their meaning, words also differ according to how easy they are to pronounce. People generally prefer not to think more than necessary, and they tend to prefer objects, people, products, and words that are simple to pronounce and understand. In 2006, my colleague Daniel Oppenheimer and I investigated the performance of hundreds of stocks imm
... See more