One of my favorite running gags in “The Princess Bride” is when Wallace Shawn’s character keeps saying, “Inconceivable” with every one of Westley’s heroic escapades, at which point Mandy Patinkin’s Inigo Montoya responds, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”

We may be the equivalent of Wallace Shawn when we’re talking to our audiences about technology, as revealed in this interesting video montage from TrendWatching.com (other interesting videos are at the site, as well).

We all reach a specialized audience (imagine them asking about your journal or book title, or academic institution — even the biggest names can land with a thud in the larger world), but technology takes some time to penetrate the culture.

(Thanks to MH for the pointer.)

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Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

Discussion

2 Thoughts on "TrendWatching: I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means"

But they were asking people in 2008 what Twitter was! Why they should they have known! I thought Twitter didn’t really start to catch on until 2009. Didn’t it start to get more mainstream attention after the Hudson river crash in early 2009 when the mass media really started talking about it?

Twitter launched in 2006, I believe, and was well-known by people like us. You’re right, it takes something like Sully’s landing to make something mainstream.

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