Wilkommen, Bienvenu, Welcome... Sziasztok!

Welcome to The Lotus Position, an intermittent collection of extempore navel gazings, ponderings, whinges, whines, pontifications and diatribes.

Everything is based on a Sample of One: these are my views, my experiences... caveat lector... read the Disclaimer

The Budapest Office - Castro Bisztro, Madach ter

The Budapest Office - Castro Bisztro, Madach ter
Ponder, Scribble, Ponder (Photo Erdotahi Aron)

Tuesday 28 August 2007

Ultrahegemonic logodaedalic obfuscation

I received an email from an agency this afternoon, seeking a consultant with, among others, "CHUI" skills.

CHUI? What does CHUI mean (apart from "leopard" in Swahili)?

Is it perhaps "Computer Human User Interface", which would be a grandiose, obscure and totally unnecessary extension of:
  • HUI, Human User Interface; which only makes sense if you hyphenate it thusly, "Human-User Interface" and still overlooks what the Human-User is interfacing with), related to:
  • HCI, Human Computer Interface (watch that hyphenation!); which is acceptably sensible - though how many people design interfaces for the benefit of goldfish, triffids, gorillas, etc.? No doubt itself a development of:
  • MMI, Man Machine Interface; which I presume was deprecated because it appeared to neglect the needs of female computer users.
No... it means "CHaracter User Interface", so it's either a book, a theatre seat or a keyboard... and thus yet another a totally unnecessary acronymised concept (see here for some other possibilities)

I hate such unnecessary linguistic aggrandisements!

Get a GRIP! (General Readability Interface Protocol)

By the way, the next time somebody asks me what my assessment of my own "interpersonal communications skills" is, I shall tell them that I don't know... I spend most of my time talking to trees.

0 comments: