Yesterday I wrote about  how “cloud” is just the next stage in technology in the data center, not some mystical level of enlightenment to which all techies must attain. My post was definitely written for the people who make technology decisions, but more specifically to those who down in the trench making all this new tech blend with old tech.

This post from James Watters is about the same topic, but definitely aimed a little higher up the food chain. His post – Why Emerging Technologies Are Nothing Sports Scores – addresses the problem created when companies who create products to fill the gaps created by emerging tech are judged by the same criteria as companies addressing established tech. James calls it “social encoding” – we want the pretty dashboard reporting that tells us the new company will make it on Wall Street, that we should invest in it, that we should follow the buzz words and make sure the products we build have a tab for that tech in the next version (or that at least we need to get it on the roadmap cuz it has been identified as important on a pretty quadrant graph).

Go read his post now.

The issue of talking in pretty fluffy words seems to be running rampant all up and down the food chain. And there are real consequences, from making sure your company doesn’t fall behind to over zealous bloggers making claims that have almost real-world negative implications.

I’m not sure what the answer is – we need to be more critical of what we read. We need to hold people more responsible for what they blog – and I don’t mean crucify them. I mean have critical discussions about what we read. Maybe that is the solution?