Powerpoint epistemology

ryan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:13:00 -0400

I love the new corporate bullshit meme of no longer referring to the internet as “the internet”, but rather “the cloud.” I first noticed it in Walt Mossberg’s interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (guess which one used it) and I’ve seen it all over the place since.

This of course comes from the tradition of representing the internet (or a network in general) as a literal cloud in powerpoint and networking diagrams. It’s a sort of lazy stock-art gesture towards “a bunch of magic stuff happens here.”

What is simultaneously funny and pathetic about this, of course, is that the mentality of corporate IT is such that they begin to perceive reality as a representation of their crappy diagrams rather than the other way round.

Reality is only an ancillary concern. Apparently, it’s what’s on the damn slide that matters.

NotRocketSurgery: Tag corporate

Powerpoint epistemology