01 06 08 - 10:23
What to do when a technical genius goes “over your head”
By John Potter
We are a more sophisticated group than our ancestors….correct?
We use tools, control fire, have language and have big brains.
Now imagine yourself dropped naked into the jungle far from a populated region. No lighter to start a fire and no one to talk to. How well do you think you would do?
You might find yourself seeking out advice from a Stone Age tribe of Indians.
This is how technobabble generally works. Someone who is familiar with a lot of tools and technology assumes credit for them and presents him or herself kind of like Oz in The Wizard of Oz…as an omnipotent magical force when in fact they are only using tools developed by others.
Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. This is what technobabblers are counting on. People who technobabble usually know they’re doing it, and usually are doing it to dazzle their audience. It may be for ego and it may be to make themselves appear important or invaluable in a business deal but it’s still the same thing by any name.
Sure, occasionally after spending so many hours in front of a computer it’s easy to overestimate someone else's knowledge, and some concepts are difficult to communicate. This having been said, communication is a pretty important skill too, and if someone doesn’t have communication skills that may be a bad sign too.
My bottom line…If you don’t understand something technical that is being presented to you ask yourself this, “Do I want to or need to understand this”. If the answer is no then politely ask them to move on. If the answer is yes then ask them to explain it more simply. If they seem to be unable, be clear that you want or need to understand this and it is their responsibility to present the information in a way you can at least roughly understand.
A little editorial comment on technobabble
You may recall the much touted Millennium Bug.
There was wide spread belief towards the end of the year 2000 that there would be major consequences do to the clocks on computers rolling over to 2001. Although some claims were legitimate, far too many were not. Any computer running Windows was already Y2K compliant for instance.
After absolutely nothing happened on that New Years Eve I watched layoffs and salaries drop. Sure…there were market forces in play as well, but the truth is a lot of Techno babblers had gotten greedy and burned a lot of good faith between companies and the computer people they employed.
|
Trackback link:Please enable javascript to generate a trackback url