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It would seem that the web is ablaze, once again, with a lot of buzz going around about “real-time” companies and services trying to ride the ‘old-buzz‘ in an attempt to get their 15 xx (insert your favorite time-frame here) of fame. Funny thing, because if you were to believe all the hype that these companies are generating, you’d start believing that someone has invented a time-machine to get the news and data before they happen so then they can be served in “real-time”. Much like when Biff Tannen gave his younger self a copy of the Sports Almanac.

I know we’ve made a lot of great technological advances in the last few years, but we are yet to invent the time machine (unless your name is Dr. Emmett Brown)

So, please stop calling it “real-time”. Unless you drive a DeLorean that can go at 88 mph and go Back to the Future, it is not.

DeLorean

Applied to the latest social-media tool and social-networks site, the term attempts to connote a sense of immediacy and proximity that modern technology and our current understanding of the laws of physics can not realistically provide for.

But the problem is not the technology or the services that these companies attempt to provide. The problem is our pressing need to over-hype and super-buzz our language in an attempt to impress. But these “impress” attempts are based on the “pop-corn” model: full of hot air and not enough substance. And as the year 2001 clearly proved, following the “pop-corn” model, however tasty at the moment, is a recipe for disaster.

The good news is that we’ve been there (2001), done that. And most of us not only remember what happened, but we’ve actually learned the lessons (I hope) And this is one situation where we don’t need to go Back to the Future to avoid the consequences of our Present.