The Zombie Rights Campaign Blog

‘Zombie’ Tech Article Flattering, Somewhat Better Use of Term

We’ve talked here at the ZRC about the overuse of the term ‘Zombie’ to describe things that a given individual doesn’t like. ‘Zombie’ ideas, ‘Zombie’ banks and so forth. Up until now this overly broad application of the term had always been pejorative, but today I saw this article:

Zombie Tech: These Ceiling Lights Are Delivering the Web
Posted by Michael_Byrne on Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010

It’s simple: instead of radio waves or cables, these ceiling lights are transmitting information via flickering binary code (basically) at a special photosensitive modem. The company’s called LVX System and it’s already installed the tech, which is on par with home DSL speed-wise, in six municipal buildings in Minnesota.The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is, likely, next.

Also, very notably, this is tech that’s back from the dead. Alexander Graham Bell had this idea in 1880 with his “photophone,” a transmission system that sent voice information via a modulated light beam. I’d say it never caught on, but the photophone is basically the precursor to fiber-optics. And what is this but regressive fiber-optics—minus the fiber and a whole lot slower (so far).

Zombie technology, eh?

Well… again, I’m not sure this is a good trend. While it promotes a more positive image, to be sure, if we open the floodgates to Zombie meaning ‘anything anyone wants’ it makes for a lot of headaches. On the other hand, as opposed to a bank that didn’t ‘die’, or an idea that didn’t die because ideas can’t, a technology can, in a sense, perish (i.e. stop being implemented) and then ‘rise’ from its proverbial grave (sometimes literal graves, if you count landfills).

It’s closer to being Zombielike, at least.

Eh. I won’t raise a stink about it as long as we have to put up with all the other six-degrees-of-separation ‘Zombie’ terminology abuses, at least.


About The Author

The role of 'Administrator' will be played tonight by John Sears, currently serving as President of The Zombie Rights Campaign.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


4 + = eleven

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>