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When a Tech 'Breakthrough' Isn't Really
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "'More than 8,600 press releases have been issued over the years with "breakthrough" in the headline, a majority of them by computer and electronics companies,' Lee Gomes writes in the Wall Street Journal. He examines whether hyperbole and hype has robbed the term of much of its meaning, focusing on a recently announced 'breakthrough' by Intel involving optical computing. From the article: 'Having been inside Intel's laser labs, I need no persuading that the company is doing important work here, and an Intel spokesman says the development is indeed a "breakthrough" because it shows how real-world optical products can be made with silicon. I wonder, though, how many more breakthroughs we will be reading about before optical computing becomes ubiquitous.'"
Breakthrough: any significant or sudden advance, development, achievement, or increase, as in scientific knowledge or diplomacy, that removes a barrier to progress.
As long as there are barriers to progress (and they never seem to run out) we will have breakthroughs. As the saying goes: "If the Shoe Fits..."
As a rule, I never trust dark brown ketchup.
There are two sides to this...
First off, more breakthroughs than ever are being made these days. Our technological advances are being made at an almost "silly" rate. We have made so many more in the past century than in the millenium that preceeded it. Why? Better education, greater body of knowledge, and of course computing doesn't hurt. So yes, there are alot of breakthroughts taking place.
However, the term is also used as marketing hype. It still has a buzz to it after all these years of being misused, so I don't think companies will stop using it as a marketing scheme.
In reference to IBM in the article... they certainly use the term "breakthrough", and much of what they do deserves recognition as such as they have pushed the envelope with their R&D. Of course Intel has also done a fantastic job. Some of what these companies do isn't necessary ground breaking work, as it has been done before. So I find it difficult to determine if the term should be used still since the work has been done before, but the difference is that when one of these large companies does it, it is so much more likely to succeed.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
The problem is that the word "breakthrough" has more than one meaning.
1. An act of overcoming or penetrating an obstacle or restriction.
2. A military offensive that penetrates an enemy's lines of defense.
3. A major achievement or success that permits further progress, as in technology.
(From www.answers.com)
Press release writers can legitimately use the word to mean the first definition (a solution to a problem), while implying the third (emotive, hyperbolic) definition even if it doesn't actually mean it. As such, it is a very useful word to make your company look like it is leaping ahead of the competition and deserving of funding, whereas a press release which sticks to practical unemotive language and doesn't "big-up" the company is wasting an opportunity to generate interest and investment.
No wonder it's an overused word - it makes your company money.
"As with our colleges, so with a hundred 'modern improvements'; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
Thoreau, of course, was a technologist and business entrepreneur whose process for combining clay with graphite was a breakthrough in the development of pencil "lead..."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
- GPS
- nanotech
- cloning
- lasik eye surgery (one of the greatest inventions in the world if you previously had poor eyesight)
- global finance
- advances in manufacturing materials (polymers, alloys, etc.)
- You seem to ignore the internet as a whole. While the bits and pieces examined by themselves are not technological breakthroughs, the system as a whole has COMPLETELY changed the way in which our world communicates and does business. To ignore the impact it has had is shortsighted.
- the Patriot missle system
- Wordstar...you included a damn word processor on your freaking list!! I understand it was popular at the time but come on man! I believe all the medical breakthroughs in the last 10-15 years trumps that silly word processor. Oh that's right, you live inside a small bubble consisting of space and computers. Nothing EVER happens outside of those two subjects.