Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Phillips Is There a Developer-to-English Translation Program?
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 5:02 AM
Over at The Tennessean, they have a story about some plans to do something with seven-and-a-half acres of land near the new Music City Center. It sure would be cool to know what these plans are, exactly, and why specifically they might attract members of the "creative class" to Nashville.
But this is how the developer describes the project:
“The basic premise is to take the music and entertainment vertical that Nashville is well-known for and wrapping technology around it to retain and attract more computer science-oriented individuals and creative talent in both entertainment and technology,” said local developer Tom Baldridge, founder of McIntyre Ventures and Pantheon Park.
How is "vertical" a noun? How is it something you can wrap technology around? How will wrapping technology around this vertical attract computer science-oriented individuals? What the hell is he even saying?
I like to think of myself as a member of the creative class (even if at the less-talented end of the spectrum) and this story makes me feel instead like a crotchety old man. In my day, words had meanings. You couldn't just turn any old word into a noun and pretend like everyone understood it. If you wanted geeks to come live with you, you just had to know that FORTRAN wasn't one of the Autobots and promise them they could roll their 12-sided dice in your basement. That was it. We didn't go wrapping their technology around our vertical, at least, not before we got to know them. And we walked uphill both ways every day to school, barefoot. In the snow! And we liked it that way!
So I guess something designed to appeal to creative geeks is a good thing. But I'm honestly concerned that unless Baldridge has someone other than himself explain what the hell he's trying to do, there's not a single person in or out of town who's going to understand what he's up to, or why we should find it appealing.
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