Different Valley, Different Lingo

By MARTHA GROVES

Sept. 4, 1993 12 AM PT

SAN FRANCISCO —

Silicon Valley is notorious for buzzwords and acronyms capable of glazing over the eyes of all but the most nimble techno-nerds: client-server, MIPS, host-selectable power-saving modes, RISC, gridless ion sources , ASICs, EPROMs, PCMCIA, LANs, WANs. (Right about now, eyes glaze over.)

Now comes comic relief in the form of an anonymous list of common phrases for real people, which found its way to the fax machine of a set builder at American Conservatory Theater.

Some examples:

All new: The software is not compatible with any previous version.

Advanced design: Upper management doesn’t understand it.

Breakthrough: It nearly worked on the first try.

Revolutionary: The disk drives go ‘round and ‘round.

Maintenance-free: Impossible to fix.

It’s here at last: We finished a 26-week project in 48 weeks.

Years of development: We finally got one to work.

Martha Groves

Martha Groves, who covered the Westside for the Los Angeles Times, left the newsroom in 2015. A native Hoosier, she became a Metro reporter after many years as a Business writer and editor. She previously worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the late, lamented Chicago Daily News.

Different Valley, Different Lingo

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