[Image Credit: Despotes]

There are some wonderful “bizzwords” in the show, along with some historical perspective. As the show description notes:

Every walk of life has its lingo. Its buzzwords and catchphrases. American business has its own colorful menagerie of slang, and always has — from bulls and bears, to bootstraps, and 800-pound gorillas, and fish in a barrel.

But buzzwords and catchphrases change. They turn over and make way for newcomers.

And when they do, in American business, they may tell us something about where we and our economy are headed.

If you lived through the business world of the 80s, you no doubt encountered a consultant or executive who talked about “re-engineering business processes” or finding “synergies” between different products.

Cube farmers could be depended upon to be seen “prairie dogging” when something happened around the office. Networking at cocktail parties was hot.  Blamestormers might be Dilberted. Seagull managers might fly in to observe their microserfs, make a lot of noise, poop over everything and then leave.

If you worked in technology, you probably had a PC. As a hacker, you might have laughed about clueless users needed treeware. Everyone worried about career-limiting moves (CLMs) that might result from a bad click or command, propagating in an ohnosecond.

And of course, like, ya know, everything was, like, totally rad, dude.

In the 90s, couch potatoes turned to mouse potatoes as office workers all jumped on the Information Superhighway. Wired happily documented it all in its Jargon Watch column. By the end of the decade, i-everything and e-anything created one of the great tech bubbles.

Everyone wanted to go IPO. A few years later so one of the great crashes. Dotcommers became dotgoners and dotbombers. The 80/20 rule defined actionable moments after careful cost-benefit analyses. If something could be outsourced, it was. Viral marketing zipped off into email distribution lists, moving through word of mouse.

In the late ’00s (naughts), the Web 2.0 bubble has replaced the Internet bubble, as social networkers expand their social graphs, exposed to infotisements and advertorials as they blog, edit wikis and surf the blogosphere with RSS readers on iPhones. Online marketers are accountable for the ROI of every campaign. We’ve crowdsourced many actions and processes, whereever feasible, bending to the wisdom of the crowd and selling to the long tail.

Google is both a verb and a noun, along with nearly every conceivable form in between. Despite the company’s best efforts, google has even escaped proper noun status in many communities. The President calls it “the Google.”  The senior senator from Arizona talks about “a google.” The junior senator  from Illinois (and his search committee) Googled potential vice-presidential candidates. As billions of revenue from search adverstising each quarter streaming in to the Internet giant, it’s clear we’re a culture of Googlers googling each other, egosurfing away.

We’re also frazzing, dangerously close to overload by switching from email to cell phone to IM to text messages to meetings to Twitter and the Web.

Steeped in media from satellite and cable news networks, DVRs, DVD-players, on-demand programming and Web video, there’s even a danger of what sociologist Emile Durkheim might have identified as a kind of digital anomie, colorfully described as “Dorito Syndrome” — a persistent feeling of dissatisfaction and emptiness, regardless of consumption.

No matter how much screensucking you do, there’s always more. Lisa Belkin wrote about a number of these in the New York Times in 2006 in Overly Wired.

Widgets are everywhere now, of course, and may be anything from a small gadget to an embeddable module in an iGoogle page to a downloadable desktop application or even (gasp) an esoteric mechanical device. (Guinness drinkers have their own version, of course.)

The green computing wave spurred by skyrocketing energy costs from power-hungry data centers has spawned many biologically-themed terms.

Greenwashing, astroturfing and blacksurfing have all entered the lexicon. Every product seems to live in its own ecosystem.

Freemium business models now may promote coopetition between fierce competitors, perhaps using telepresence rooms that are far too expensive for standard percussive maintenance.

Under such conditions, “matadors” (people skilled at dodging assignments or responsibility) have little chance of scraping by, as the presence technologies, pervasive computing and “status message culture” adopted by the millenials puts “slacking” firmly into the lexicon of decades-past.

And, of course, we’re all increasingly computing in the cloud now.

As we near the end of this decade, the buzzwords of the ’10s have yet to be coined and collectively sampled, savored and entered into the lexicons maintained by Merriam-Webster, the Oxford Englsh Dictionary and, of course, the best online IT encyclopedia online. (Shameless plug).

Some will end up as sniglets, humorous oddities of cultures past. Other words will always remind the culture at large of a certain time and place.

Here’s hoping we can improve on vlog, blook and webinar.

If you have an idea of what lingo might define the next decade of business, let me know at ahoward@techtarget.com or leave a comment.

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Visit their site and you’ll find their three-pronged approach: Learn, Practice, Share.  During “practice”, you can invite your friends to “join the conversation and motivate each other”.  During “share”, you connect with others, sharing tips and getting free tutoring.  All seems pretty neat to me.  Here’s the question I’d have for the folks at Livemocha: on your “Which language do you want to learn?” drop-down menu, when will you be adding Ruby on Rails?    

One mathematical concept that’s worth mastering is the monad. Monads, in the context of functional programming (as opposed to pure mathematics), are a useful way of expressing input/output (I/O) operations and changes in state without using language features that introduce side effects. Monads are useful in any situation where a programmer wants to carry out a purely functional computation while a related computation is performed externally. Monad also, by the way, was the codename for Window’s Powershell before it was launched, a nod to the use of monads in that highly functional scripting language.

Make sense?

If that explanation still doesn’t suffice to explain what a monad is, never fear: The Catsters have posted a series of videos on YouTube to help you master the concept!

Monads 1: An introduction to monads, including the definition and a look at the monoid monad.

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Monads 2: Continuation of the monoid monad example and introduction of the category monad.

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Monads 3: The definition of algebras for monads. The example of monoids as algebras for the monoid monad.

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Monads 4: An appendix to Monads 3: more on monoids as algebras for the monoid monad.

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Monads 5: Morphisms between algebras and the category of algebras. A first look at the question of monadicity.

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If, after viewing, you’re still a bit curious about monads and programming, try Noel Winstanley’s “What the hell are Monads?” MenTaLguY also explains monads in the context of Ruby, escaping the need to work with Haskell.

Hat tip goes to the n-Category Cafe for the discovery!

Quiz: For Latin Lovers

Latin is a dead language,
As dead as it can be.
First it killed the Romans
And now it’s killing me.

Years ago, when Latin was taught in the public schools, all the boys and girls inscribed their Latin texts with that little ditty. Or so our moms tell us. Despite its seeming unpopularity, Latin was — and still is — extremely useful for making you look like a real smartypants. Are you a Latin Lover? Take our quiz to help you decide.

In fact — believe it or not — I’m not a fluent speaker of Latin, so I set forth to look for potential phrases that I could bend to my purposes. I found, to my delight, that there was not a lot that I could use for the quiz, but lots of things that might be handy for other applications:

Here’s a slice of the long list of common and useful Latin phrases from Dialogue on Everything2.com:

Ne plus ultra: Nothing further; perfection
Nil desperandum: No reason for despair; never despair.
Nolen volens: Willing or unwilling
Non compos mentis: Not of sound mind
Non sequitur: It does not follow.
Nota bene: Mark well.
Obiit: He (or she) died.
Obiter dictum: A thing said by the way
Ora pro nobis: Pray for us.
Ore rotundo: With full voice
O tempora! O mores!: O the times! O the manners!

Below, there’s a coordinated list from Xerces. Here’s a taste:

E contrario: on the contrary
Experto credite!: Trust me!
Extinctus amabitur idem: How soon we forget!
Fama volat: Rumor travels swiftly
Filius est patris: He’s a chip off the old block
Forte consulto: accidently on purpose – a cool oxymoron!
Hic et nunc: here and now
Hic et ubique: here and everywhere
Humanum est errare: To err is human

From systay on Everything₂, Fun Latin phrases. Such as:

Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
- If you can read this you’re overeducated

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur
- Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out

Un idea perplexi na
- The idea is strange to us

albae gallinae filius
- son of a white chicken

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum
- I think that I think, therefore I think that I am

If you look to the bottom of the page, there are links to a variety of Latin pages on the site.

The BBC’s h2g2 pages have more Latin fun. Here are just a few of the need-to-know phrases listed:

Ita erat quando hic adveni: It was that way when I got here

Nihil declarandum: I have nothing to declare

Ut si!: As if!

Canis meus id comedit: My dog ate it

Die dulci freure: Have a nice day

Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabris, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam: I have a catapult. Unless you give me all of your money, I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

Utinam barbari spatioum proprium tuum invadant: May barbarians invade your personal space

Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem: Stand aside, little people! I am here on official business

Or you could go to Abigail’s Big Table of Latin Phrases

Here’s a sampling of handy phrases from Abigail’s cheatsheet:

Heia, amice, utrum illae sunt sarcinae tuae, an modo Carthaginem despoliasti?: Hey, pal, is that carry-on luggage or did you just sack Carthage?

Heu, modo itera omnia quae mihi nunc nuper narravisti, sed nunc Anglice?: Listen, would you repeat everything you just told me, only this time say it in English?

hunc tu caveto: beware of this man

Id est mihi, id non est tibi!: It is mine, not yours!

Id imperfectum manet dum confectum erit: It isn’t over until it’s over

Illegitimi non carborundum: Don’t let the bastards wear you down

Illiud Latine dici non potest: You can’t say that in Latin.

And with that, friends, Absum! (I’m outta here!)

~ Ivy Wigmore