When I’m not playing football or writing songs about bus stops, I like to spend my time chatting to data scientists. Well, who wouldn’t?
Who wouldn’t be excited to learn about the future in which we’re all cruising about in driverless cars, living in wobbly-shaped skyscrapers and printing our own dinner? But the tech revolution is not all a bed of 3D-printed roses. Along with the obvious benefits of having a talking kitchen, there are certain threats we should be aware of too. And right now the biggest threat to life as we know it is acronym overload (AO).
Until about 100 years ago, nobody cared much for acronyms. Manchester United Football Club was Manchester United Football Club, not ManU or MUFC. Folk had more time on their hands in those days. Unless, that is, they were fighting a war. The few acronyms to be found in the early part of the 20th century were military terms like ANZAC and AWOL. Having started, those Generals just couldn’t stop: radar, sonar, laser, scuba, NATO. And then the football world fought back: FIFA, UEFA, OG.
Ah, but is OG (that’s own goal, by the way) an acronym or an initialism? It seems there’s a difference. An acronym should really be a word, not a series of initials. So BA, for Bachelor of Arts, is not an acronym but an initialism, as are RAC, AA, CIA and FBI. NASA is an acronym.
For the purposes of this article, though, we’ll call them all acronyms because, well, we just do, don’t we? Plus, fascinating though the distinction may be, it is not the problem. The problem is acronym overload.
AO started with Alcoholics Anonymous. Whether or not it was deliberate, calling itself AA caused instant confusion with the breakdown service. The streets of Britain are strewn with the rusting hulks of cars left abandoned by owners who thought they’d signed up for the Home Recovery service but found themselves enrolled in the 12 step programme instead.
The problem reached crisis point when the World Wildlife Fund, a worthy charity for the protection of the planet’s endangered species, found itself sharing an acronym with the World Wrestling Federation, an entirely different bunch of beasts. Donations dried up as animal lovers feared their money was being misappropriated for the preservation of Hulk Hogan. Fortunately, after two submissions and a knock-out, the panda won.
But the problem has not gone away. We live in a world littered with ambiguous acronyms (AAs). Does PC stand for police constable, politically correct or personal computer? OK, you’re unlikely to confuse those three things but there are countless other examples where you might (honestly, there are, I’m just a bit pushed for time). Each new industry or social trend pours its own acronyms into the linguistic cauldron, regardless of whether any of those acronyms have already been added to the brew.
This week I’ve been gathering information on AM, which I thought was the morning time, or possibly a crackly radio frequency, but turns out to be additive manufacturing (3D printing to you); AI, which has always meant Adobe Illustrator to me but apparently stands for artificial intelligence; and the IoT, which isn’t the Isle of Thanet but that futuristic conglomeration of talking appliances known as the Internet of Things. Imagine my embarrassment!
What we need is some sort of legal protection for acronyms (LPA), where the first one in secures the intellectual property (IP). Or is that internet provider? Otherwise I foresee a time when our fridges are trying to tell us something and we haven’t got the faintest idea what they’re talking about.
So, any suggestions as to what we might call this acronym regulatory service?
