TECHNOBABBLE

In information technology and other specialized areas, technobabble is the
use of technical or "insider" terms that, to the uninitiated, have no meaning.
Technobabble can be divided into (1) technical terms with some formal
standing in language such as new transmission or computer communication
protocols,especially in their abbreviated or acronym forms, (2) marketing
terms in which terms with prior meaning are give new missions, and (3) informal,
colloquial, or jargon terms (of which technobabble itself would seem to be an
example). The latter could be divided into those with technical meaning and
those with social meaning. To the extent that change occurs in information
technology and other technical or scientific fields in ways that affect nontechnical
people and require them to learn about the new technologies (for example,
buying and maintaining a computer), the possibilities for the creation and
further proliferation of technobabble increase.

Although this term primarily connotes words that discourage understanding,
it is not always used in a negative sense, but often in the sense that "here
is some technical information in the terms that have been invented for it."

Closely related terms include: technospeak and geekspeak.

Selected Links

Shelton Leigh Palmer's A Lexicon of Technobabble and Colloquial Expressions
offers some good examples, including cusskiddie ("AOL cybercop-speak for an
immature user who posts vulgarity in a public forum") and pulling glass
("laying down optical fiber wire").

Sheila Davis's Technobabble page includes crapplet ("A badly written or profoundly
useless Java applet") and squirt the bird ("To transmit a signal up to a satellite").

John Barry has written a book, Technobabble, MIT Press, (1993), that treats the
subject both seriously and humorously.

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