An absence of joy in the decision space
25/03/09 16:40 Filed in: -Joy
On odd occasions, I find myself railing and flailing against the world in the manner of someone who needs some kind of mental purgative, a psychic enema to flush out the toxic contents of my brain. I arrive at this sorry state when I’ve read something particularly poisonous, allegedly written in the English language but contorted by jargon, management-speak or plain unadulterated bullshit. I might collect these and put them up here from time to time.
Here’s one I found on a ghastly website extolling the benefits of software that helps businesses respond to changes in their financial circumstances.
SmithBayes - apparently “offers a pioneering agile decision platform” and can also “build different routes and options through a complex and moving decision space”.
I bet that the copywriter became sexually aroused when they came up with the concept of a ‘decision space’, but what exactly is a decision space? Is it a physical space where you make decisions, in which case they might like to use an alternative term like, for example, room? Or is it a visual metaphor for the decision-making process?
In either case, the phrase “build different routes and options through a complex and moving decision space” calls to mind a traditional box hedge maze with infinite configurations, mounted on an earthquake ‘shake table’. At random intervals, the table is driven somewhere else in the back of a lorry, dropped off a cliff or set fire to, while a man - who looks less like a businessman than a catalogue model - taps his chin and wonders whether to order five or six thousand widgets in the next fiscal year.
It is like cheap after-shave - it makes dull people feel more interesting while the rest of us choke in their musky wake. It makes business seem dynamic, exciting and professional while masking the awful banality of inventory management, just-in-time, zero day solutions and screwing people over for a pound to raise your stock by a penny.
-Joy = -7/-10
Here’s one I found on a ghastly website extolling the benefits of software that helps businesses respond to changes in their financial circumstances.
SmithBayes - apparently “offers a pioneering agile decision platform” and can also “build different routes and options through a complex and moving decision space”.
I bet that the copywriter became sexually aroused when they came up with the concept of a ‘decision space’, but what exactly is a decision space? Is it a physical space where you make decisions, in which case they might like to use an alternative term like, for example, room? Or is it a visual metaphor for the decision-making process?
In either case, the phrase “build different routes and options through a complex and moving decision space” calls to mind a traditional box hedge maze with infinite configurations, mounted on an earthquake ‘shake table’. At random intervals, the table is driven somewhere else in the back of a lorry, dropped off a cliff or set fire to, while a man - who looks less like a businessman than a catalogue model - taps his chin and wonders whether to order five or six thousand widgets in the next fiscal year.
It is like cheap after-shave - it makes dull people feel more interesting while the rest of us choke in their musky wake. It makes business seem dynamic, exciting and professional while masking the awful banality of inventory management, just-in-time, zero day solutions and screwing people over for a pound to raise your stock by a penny.
-Joy = -7/-10