I think there is something deeper about human social interaction at work. BuzzWords have great meaning for the tech crowd. Knowing the buzzwords makes you part of the “in-crowd” in the geek culture. That acceptance breeds the confidence and productivity that makes all geeks seek out new buzzwords, invent new ones, and maybe some new technology along the way.

The fact that these terms are meaningless to the average potential consumer of the technology is the fault of marketing and product teams. Tech buzzwords help drive innovation, in a way, but they don’t help end-users and aren’t meant to. Marketing and product teams thoughout the tech industry are lazy, or misguided into thinking that people want to understand how a product works.
I think Bill is right in saying, it’s about what is does (the purpose), not how it does it.

I think you’re exactly right. The language of technology is an unneccesary barrier that needs to be broken down to help people understand what’s really going on with the web. One difficulty in changing the language is that there is a kind of secret club aspect amongst people who understand it. There seems to be a small satisifaction that some people get by discussing things in terms that others don’t understand. Hence the emergence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

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