The Year of Cloud and Big Data Obfuscation | John C. Dvorak | PCMag.com

The jargon and double-speak are hitting all-time highs in Silicon Valley and beyond. Here's the translations you need.

Everyone seems to think that the Cloud and Big Data is going to be bigger than ever in 2016. All of us "data civilians" (a new term I just ran across) will only need a terminal and a mobile phone, maybe a notepad, to get access.

This vision would be a little more attractive if today's cloud offerings worked as advertised. That includes Adobe's Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office 365, and cloud initiatives by Autodesk and others, none of which work as smoothly as they should and must be a support nightmare. This holds true for anything with the "cloud" moniker, including various "personal clouds" in the form of Network Attached Storage (NAS) with some Internet access.

Exactly why the simplicity of a backup system consisting of a USB-attached drive and a decent backup program is eschewed in favor of the cloud is beyond me. The only relevant fear to argue against in-house backup is if the place burns down. So yes, you need an offsite backup. Fine. I personally keep a backup drive in my car trunk or at someone else's house. Apparently General Motors cannot do that.

Meanwhile, since data is being accumulated in these various "clouds," the idea that this information can provide a source for analysis is being chatted up, unlike anything I've seen since the days of "client-server."

The level of linguistic nonsense used to hype the idea is reaching an all-time high. Let me relate a few gems in a recent article from the India Infoline News Service regarding Oracle's predictions for 2016 regarding Big Data. It's as though the editors sat around dreaming up the most ludicrous and meaningless phrases they could imagine. Adderall is at work here.

This is the thesis sentence used to describe what will happen in the coming year: "2016 will witness an increase in the proliferation of experiments default risk, policy underwriting, and fraud detection as firms try to identify hotspots for algorithmic advantage faster than the competition." Translation: In 2016 we will struggle to make anything work.

And there is this gem: "In 2016, simpler big data discovery tools will let business analysts shop for datasets in enterprise Hadoop clusters, reshape them into new mashup combinations, and even analyze them with exploratory machine learning technique." Translation: In 2016 we'll see a lot of confusing tools that will do nothing useful.

Onward: "Organizations will witness that successful data virtualization technology will offer performance equal to that of native methods, complete backward compatibility and security." Translation: This makes no sense, but sounds like it might make sense.

Next: "But in the big data era data lineage is a must-have because customers are mashing up company data with third-party data sets." Translation: We will try not to lose data in a simple merge-purge operation.

Another one: "Highly secure IoT Cloud services will help manufacturers create new products that safely take action on the analyzed data without human intervention." Translation: Let's make the most idiotic assertions and see what happens.

I'd advise everyone, especially investors, to read this article since all the newest Silicon Valley jargon and nonsense is in there for your use at the next board meeting. Mix and match and call it a trend. Something like "Balance controlled security sub-systems using AI techniques will eliminate the need for intervention regarding vendor verifications." Cool!

What I see is obfuscation and nonsense. Someone will lap this up because they are indeed dull-witted and this sounds smart to them. What it tells me is that these technologies are mostly a con; otherwise why can't someone actually explain the benefits in plain English? It's because it ends up coming out like the above translations.

We'll be able to do it someday...after the nonsense dissipates. I can do it with cloud services, for example. Translation: Clouds services are searchable and sometimes manipulatable off-site data backup stores. Also a way to make more money.

I can now do it for Big Data. Translation: Big Data is a meaningless term employed as a promise for some unobtainable utopia of information analysis. Also a way to make more money.

So when someone uses the moniker "Big data" at a cocktail party, immediately call them a Communist and walk away.

John Dvorak is a columnist for PCMag.com and the host of the weekly TV video podcast CrankyGeeks. His work is licensed around the world. Previously a columnist for Forbes, Forbes Digital, PC World, Barrons, MacUser, PC/Computing, Smart Business and other magazines and newspapers. Former editor and consulting editor for Infoworld. Has appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, Philadelphia Enquirer, SF Examiner, Vancouver Sun. Was on the start-up team for CNet TV as well as ZDTV. At ZDTV (and TechTV) was host of Silicon... More »

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