As we move into the final quarter of 2012, the most in-vogue tech jargon word of this year must surely be 'ecosystem': last Thursday, for instance, I heard it uttered some 12 times in one day during the
course of my visit to the IP EXPO exhibition and conference, and then later the IET Young Professionals Event - the splendid evening lecture by Eben Upton, Founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Wikipedia's definition defines ecosystems conservatively as 'a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with the non-living components of their environment (things like air, water and mineral soil), interacting as a system'. The Oxford Dictionary allows for a secondary usage, 'a complex network or interconnected systems', as in 'Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ecosystem', but does so with a certain distaste, one fancies. In this respect, vendor brand value can be seen as the residual DNA of a technology-specific ecosystem. Here's E&T's latest list of over-used clichés, jargon, and buzzwords from our wholly unscientific media monitor...

1. Ecosystem
2. Moral climate
3. Discontinuity
4. Mandarins (as in 'civil service mandarins', 'Whitehall mandarins')
5. Transparency
6. Thought leadership
7. Box ticking exercise
8. Narrative
9. Future-proof
10. 360° (as in a '360° view of the socio-political landscape')
11. Outcomes (especially 'patient outcomes' in any NHS story)
12. Economic miracle (usually preceded by 'China's')

Edited: 23 October 2012 at 11:58 AM by James Hayes