Sobering times call for look to past

Is it just me, or does anyone else think the widely-used American business phrase, "open the kimono", is rather crass? Every other week some slick industry analyst or vice-president of hyperbole and marketing seems to use this phrase regarding the technology industry.

I've even seen a lively online debate regarding the origins of the term. Most seemed to agree it was of second World War vintage and likely refers to the long-awaited revelation of the real sexual goods by a woman, most likely a prostitute, after many tantalising hints.

OK, we get the picture, but just why is this considered an acceptable phrase in the business world?

Why not use an expression of equal and proportionate descriptiveness, like "Customers are waiting for Acme Software to finally get 'em out for the boys before they make their commitment to buy the upgrade to Acme's flagship product".

Or maybe: "Once Total World Domination Semiconductor drops its pants and reveals its big and fast new chip, analysts expect a surge in the PC market."

The phrase popped up on the San Jose Mercury-News website this week: "Sun Microsystems today opened the kimono on its most powerful system to date - the 106-processor Starcat or Sun Fire 15K." Oh, please. There's something truly pathetic about using an erotic metaphor in the context of a new technology product - as if an industry more associated with bespectacled brains and studious geeks must defensively feign a testosterone-laden manliness.

Another annoyingly overused phrase is "next generation", as in a "next-generation product". Yes, I know, I've used this expression many times, particularly as a shorthand for the next wave of telecommunications networks. But that's because I don't mind its usage in a context where it actually refers to a general development on the cutting edge of technology.

In such cases, the phrase matches its original implications, as when it was used as the title of the first revival of the Star Trek television series, Star Trek: the Next Generation.

The technology industry adopted the phrase. It sounds appropriate when applied to tech developments but sounds ridiculous when used to refer to some company's new spreadsheet features.

Perhaps that appears rather precious, given that the term comes from a TV show. All the same, I think there's a spirit in which the phrase is generally used that should be preserved - a kind of upbeat tech optimism. This echoes the generally positive vision of a tech-enabled future reflected in the show.

I think the technology industry is, by and large, a positive, forward-looking industry, in love with a future it is imagining into being.

This is true of the industry even in its earliest incarnations, coming out of the second World War, when visionary figures such as Vannevar Bush considered the possibilities of a personal computing device or, later, when technologists such as JC Licklider, John Englebart, Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee and others dreamed up PCs, cyberspace, the internet and the Web. Now, in the wake of the plane attacks on America, many who love technology must feel an emptiness. After those low-tech, lethal assaults, technology seems to have let us down.

It's not just that the microchip and mechanical wizardry that was supposed to protect, screen and prevent failed to do those things. It's that the resurgent energy and optimism of the industry now seems naive and foolish.

But it isn't, any more than the spirit to remake, reinvent, and revitalise is naive and foolish.

In the bleak aftermath of the second World War came the minds that imagined the computer and the internet, changing the future utterly. That's what I'm reading about now and, in dismal and sobering times, it's a cheerful backward look that helps one to keep moving forward.

Reports of the worrying state of the tech economy may have been exaggerated. A Silicon Valley shop has been selling dog beds made from Persian rugs. At $1,135 (€1,233) apiece, the beds are a mere snip

klillington@irish-times.ie