A Name For High-Tech Grief

Donald Knuth wants A Name for High-Tech Grief.

On his news page, Donald poses the following question.

But what do we call the combination of helplessness and agony that affects us when our computers or computer-based appliances do inexplicable things, for which there's no apparent workaround?

He provides an initial list of candidates gathered from friends.

• cyber despair (David Eisenbud, Talin)
• technitis (Chuck McManis)
• compu-terror (Steve Diamond)
• cyber burned or cyburned (Betsy Zeller, Dave Marvit)
• digital dread (Aza Raskin)
• techno angst (Jono DiCarlo)
• irritable bit syndrome (Charles Merriam)

Donald suggests people test the list in real world situations. Perhaps a winner will emerge.

Does anyone have suggestions for additions to the list?

Here are a few off the top of my head:

• Control-Alt-Hate
• bit rage
• computermyalgia

On the other hand, this might be a non-issue. Computers are a fad.

A Weyr of Enterprise Architects

James McGovern' article The One Hundred Enterprise Architects Meme got me thinking on the topic of collective nouns for Enterprise Architects.

A mild stab at Google uncovered

• A mystery - presumes guildsmen or tradesmen
• A glass house - yaya, keep moving
  
• A jealousy - wrong kind
  

Yawn...

Here's some low-hanging fruit off the top of my head.

• A babel
• A governance
• A 3-ring binder
  

To obvious/cliché... keep moving...

Some might suggest

• A superfluity

If you follow the EA blogosphere, how about

• A conversation

Or perhaps

• A code

...

Tower of IT Babel

It easy to admonish IT for speaking techno-babble to its customers.

This admonishment is generally deserved, but I submit that it's symptomatic of a much deeper problem. We exhibit the same problem within our IT disciplines - SOA blahblah, SAN fabric blahblah, abstract factory blahblah, delivery management blahblah... (and don't even ponder the acronyms)

There are a variety of reasons for our need to create specialized languages, but the most compelling could the need to compress complicated concepts for efficient internal communications.

By itself, this tendency to compress communications does not create a problem. Combine this with a strong tendency at specialization, however, and you have a recipe for communication problems between disciplines. No surprise here, but it doesn't stop here. Combine this with the need for cross-discipline solutions and you have a recipe for systemic failure.

The languages of our disciplines create barriers to communication even within IT. Our Tower of IT Babel has reached a stunning level - a gravity-defying marvel of modern thought.

Architects, in my opinion, are a critical element in any hope of a solution. We have a critical opportunity to add value by formulating frameworks and models for normalized communication between multi-discipline aggregations of carbon-based message queuing systems!