Information Technology Dark Side

Corporate IT is a funny place. It has its own language full of strange words borrowed from real life that are used in a way that has very little to do with their true meanings.

Take bandwidth for example. Webster defines bandwidth this way: the capacity for data transfer of an electronic communications system ; especially : the maximum data transfer rate of such a system. This makes sense to me - IT is all about “electronic communications systsems”, isn’t it. Here’s when I get confused: when Joe Software Engineer says he doesn’t have enough bandwidth to complete the task I’ve assigned to him, what exactly is he saying?

I know what he’s trying to say - that he’s got too many assignments already and can’t take on another one. And trust me, I’m sympathetic to this common plight. But isn’t it easier to say he’s too busy than he doesn’t have enough bandwidth? And, if someone takes the meaning of the word bandwidth for its dictionary definition rather than IT’s anecdotal meaning for it, he could arrive at the wrong conclusion about Joe Software Engineer.

Let’s look at what it means literally by substituting the Webster definition in Joe’s statement about his “bandwidth.” Here it is re-written. “My electronic communications system doesn’t have the capacity for data transfer to complete the task you’ve assigned me.”

Read that sentence again and think about it. Obviously, the word “electronic” doesn’t really apply to humans in the strictest sense, but let’s give Joe a little creative license and rewrite it one more time: “My human communications system doesn’t have the capacity for data transfer to complete the task you’ve assigned me.”

What is the human communications system? Seems obvious to me: it’s the brain.

So, here’s Joe’s sentence again: “My brain doesn’t have the capacity for data transfer to complete the task you’ve assigned me.”

This is still confusing. I’d like to find a more meaningful word for “capacity for data transfer” - something that applies to human beings rather than machines. So, how do humans transfer data? It comes in through our sensory organs (eyes, ears, tongue, nose, etc.), gets processed and analyzed by the brain, then delivered back through words, written or spoken, and pictures. But bandwidth is about the capacity to transfer data, or the amount of data that can be processed in a given amount of time. What is the human word for the amount of data a brain can process at once? First word that comes to my mind: intelligence.

SO… here’s Joe’s sentence again. “My brain doesn’t have the intelligence to complete the task you’ve assigned me.”

This is still a bit too technical for me. I prefer a more commonplace equivalent: “I’m too stupid to do my job.”

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