During high school, I was quite the class clown. Some things don’t change.
I had quite a theatrical English teacher one year – Mr. Morgan. Most of my class time with Mr. Morgan was spent in the hallway (at his direction) because I wasn’t a fan of Shakespeare (then). It drove Mr. Morgan crazy.
On one occasion, when Mr. Morgan asked, in his swanky Yale-ish accent:
What types of literary techniques did Shakespeare use in Hamlet?”
I excitedly raised my hand.
Sigh, “Mr. Karr?”
“Oxymorons”, I replied.
Chuckle, “Mr. Karr, please let the class know what an oxymoron is.”
“Sure!” I said, “It’s the juxtaposition of antithetical terms in an expression, Mr. Morgan.”
“Get out of my classroom, Mr. Karr.”
Though I was correct, Mr. Morgan appreciated my sense of humor as much as I appreciated his prose. It did get a collective laugh from the class (after the initial gasp of hearing me use multi-syllable words).
Technical Oxymorons
I’ve never forgotten the definition of an oxymoron… and I’m surprised at their excessive and, perhaps, growing usage with marketing technology today. If you want to sound like you have a cool product or service, throw an oxymoron into your marketing or technology presentation. It appears folks love it nowadays.
- Agile Development: They said they’re agile, but somehow, the deadline is still doing parkour off into the distance.
- Application Programming Interface (API): Sure, it’s called an interface, but half the time, the application stares back at you like, “You figure it out.”
- Artificial Intelligence: Let’s be honest; it’s not just artificial or intelligent. It’s good at writing emails and bad at ordering pizza.
- Blockchain: A distributed ledger of promises no one can see, follow, or trace.
- Cloud Computing: It’s just someone else’s computer… with an invoice.
- Friendly URL: Apparently, the opposite of friendly is a 78-character string with 12% special symbols and a question mark.
- Generative AI: Why hire a creative team when you can pay for GenAI that will write haikus… about your company’s quarterly earnings?
- Internet Radio: If it’s on Spotify, it’s not a radio station. It’s a playlist with commitment issues.
- $100 Computer: Batteries? Extra. Keyboard? Extra. Wi-Fi? Ha! But hey, it’s still technically a computer.
- Metaverse: A virtual world where you can look like a cartoon character and still pay $300 for virtual sneakers.
- Microservices: Breaking your application into a hundred pieces so you can fix one thing and break 99 others.
- Net Neutrality: Nothing says neutral, like your code deployment buffering while cat videos load instantly.
- Regular Expression: There’s absolutely nothing regular about spending three hours deciphering a line of code that looks like it was written by a cat walking across the keyboard. Regular is something normal; expression is literally something unique.
- Responsive Design: Your website works on every screen size… except the one your CEO uses.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Not marketing; just paying Google to rank you above the Top 10 Free Alternatives to [Your Product].
- Seamless Integration: If it’s seamless, why does every update feel like patching a quilt?
- Serverless Computing: Because servers don’t exist anymore. Until you get the invoice for all the servers.
- User Interface (UI): It’s for users, but navigating it feels like trying to assemble IKEA furniture without instructions.
- Web3: A decentralized, redundant web where you can own your data… and accidentally lose it forever with your crypto wallet.
- Zero Trust: The latest in cybersecurity: assume everyone, including yourself, is up to no good.
What’s your favorite technical oxymoron? Please share with us on social media.
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