Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey therein Welcome to tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and Happy April Fool's Day everyone. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with How Stuff Works in my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and this episode should
Speaker 1: publish on April first, two thousand nineteen, unless my producer
Speaker 1: Tari has played in April Fool's Joke on me while
Speaker 1: I'm on vacation, and I thought, well, I could do
Speaker 1: another follow up episode on the various tech pranks that
Speaker 1: have been pulled since the last time I did a
Speaker 1: prank roundup, which I think was in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: But then I decided to focus on something else, a
Speaker 1: really amazing example of engineering. So there was a fellow
Speaker 1: who was named John Helen's Quick who published a piece
Speaker 1: at least as early as nineteen It was in a
Speaker 1: December edition of the British Institution of Electrical Engineers Students
Speaker 1: Quarterly Journal. Now I say at least as early as
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, because there's some people who say that
Speaker 1: it may have been published even earlier in some other
Speaker 1: journal by nineteen forty two, but it's super hard to
Speaker 1: track down. The earliest I found was this nineteen journal.
Speaker 1: The article is a masterpiece. It describes a transformative technology
Speaker 1: called the turbo encabulator. Now, normally I wouldn't read out
Speaker 1: an entire piece, but in order to understand how important
Speaker 1: this is, I figured I would make an exception, and
Speaker 1: so here is Mr Quick's description of the turbo encabulator.
Speaker 1: For a number of years now, work has been proceeding
Speaker 1: in order to bring perfection to the crudely conceived idea
Speaker 1: of a transmission that would not only supply inverse reactive
Speaker 1: current for use in unilateral phase detractors, but would also
Speaker 1: be capable of automatically synchronizing cardinal gram meters. Such an
Speaker 1: instrument is the turbo encabulator. Now, basically, the only new
Speaker 1: principle involved is that instead of power being generated by
Speaker 1: the relative motion of conductors and fluxes, it is produced
Speaker 1: by the modial interaction of magneto reluctance and capacitive diractants.
Speaker 1: The original machine had a base plate of prefabriulated ammulite
Speaker 1: surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way
Speaker 1: that the two sperving bearings were in a direct line
Speaker 1: with the pentometric fan. The ladder consisted simply of six
Speaker 1: hydrocoptic marsal vances, so fitted to the ambifacient lunar wainshaft
Speaker 1: that side fumbling was effectively prevented. The main winding was
Speaker 1: of the normal lotus o delta type, placed in penandermic
Speaker 1: semi boloid slots in the stature, every seventh conductor being
Speaker 1: connected by a non reversible trimmy pipe to the differential
Speaker 1: girdle spring on the up end of the gram meters
Speaker 1: forty one manestic league spaced grouding brushes were arranged to
Speaker 1: feed into the rotor slip stream a mixed of high
Speaker 1: s value phenel hydro benzamine and five percent ruminative tetralio hexamine.
Speaker 1: Both these liquids have specific paracoustics given by p equals
Speaker 1: two times five c end to the six times seven,
Speaker 1: wherein is the diathetical evolute of retrograde temperature phase disposition
Speaker 1: and see is col Mondlaise annular grillage coefficient. Initially, n
Speaker 1: was measured with the aid of a metapolar refractive pilfometer,
Speaker 1: but up to the present date nothing has been found
Speaker 1: to equal the transcendental hopper data scope. Electrical engineers will
Speaker 1: appreciate the difficulty of new being together the regurgative pur
Speaker 1: well and a supremitive went al sprocket. Indeed, this proved
Speaker 1: to be a stumbling block to further development until in
Speaker 1: nWo it was found that the use of anhydrous nangling
Speaker 1: pins enabled a cryptognastic bowling him to be tankered. The
Speaker 1: early attempts to construct a sufficiently robust spiral dcommutator failed
Speaker 1: largely because of a lack of appreciation of the large
Speaker 1: quasi p stic stresses and Grimlin studs. The latter were
Speaker 1: specially designed to hold the roth Itt bars to the
Speaker 1: spam shaft. When, however, it was discovered that the winding
Speaker 1: could be prevented by a simple addition to the living sockets,
Speaker 1: almost perfect running was secured. The operating point is maintained
Speaker 1: as near as possible to the h f rempeak by
Speaker 1: constantly formaging the bitumogeneous spandrels. This is a distinct advance
Speaker 1: on the standard nivel sheave. In the no dramcock oil
Speaker 1: is required after the phase detractors have been remissed. Undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: the turbo encabulator has now reached a very high level
Speaker 1: of technical development. It has been successfully used for operating
Speaker 1: no fur trunions. In addition, wherever Barrissant score motion is required,
Speaker 1: it may be employed in conjunction with a drawn reciprocating
Speaker 1: dingle arm to reduce ying a soiled deplinoration. Now my
Speaker 1: guess is you just listen to me read off that
Speaker 1: let's say, remarkable description, and you're left with the obvious
Speaker 1: response of of course, that's that's blatantly obvious, that's old news.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps you're having what was the intended response, you're
Speaker 1: confused as heck, Quick's piece was a tongue in cheek
Speaker 1: example of satire, highlighting how engineers would sometimes rely very
Speaker 1: heavily on jargon that you know, didn't seem to really
Speaker 1: mean anything, or purposefully obfuscated the functionality of a system,
Speaker 1: or maybe even cover up the engineer's own ignorance of
Speaker 1: how a system actually worked. Jargon does have some purposes,
Speaker 1: of course. Sometimes you need to create words to describe
Speaker 1: something that didn't exist before. If you make a new
Speaker 1: device that fulfills a specific purpose, you need to have
Speaker 1: a name for it. You might need a name for
Speaker 1: the thing that the device actually does. Maybe whatever the
Speaker 1: device is doing is a brand new thing, so you've
Speaker 1: gotta have some word to describe it. Maybe what it
Speaker 1: does is a very specific instance of a more broad concept.
Speaker 1: So it's not doing a brand new thing, it's just
Speaker 1: doing a thing in a new way. So you create
Speaker 1: words to help build in precision. You don't just mean
Speaker 1: a dingle angle. You might mean a one eighth hexagonal
Speaker 1: matrix dingle angle, so you call this particular component of
Speaker 1: a fronyon or whatever. With precision, you can more quickly
Speaker 1: communicate your exact needs or intentions to others within that field.
Speaker 1: But with that growing precision comes a knowledge gap between
Speaker 1: the people in your field and everybody else. Now, in
Speaker 1: other cases, people rely on jargon not to convey specific meaning,
Speaker 1: but rather to come across as being more sophisticated or intelligent,
Speaker 1: or to make something more complicated than it really is.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna give you guys some examples from my
Speaker 1: own life. In my life, before I ever was a podcaster,
Speaker 1: before I was a writer for how Stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: I worked for a couple of different management consulting firms. Now,
Speaker 1: these were companies that were geared toward helping other companies
Speaker 1: assess manager styles or figure out what a corporate culture
Speaker 1: was within a certain business, to improve workplace efficiencies, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I was essentially working for the Bobs
Speaker 1: from Office Space. I guess you could say so if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with that film and the two consultants who
Speaker 1: come in and essentially start slashing jobs left and right.
Speaker 1: I was kind of their employee in a roundabout way,
Speaker 1: although we didn't typically advocate for slashing huge numbers off
Speaker 1: of a corporate employee list. Occasionally, yes, but not frequently.
Speaker 1: So my work was focused on help in consultants produce
Speaker 1: proposals and reports. Largely, I was there to review, to proof,
Speaker 1: freed to format, and occasionally to tweak stuff. Now I
Speaker 1: majored in English Lit when I was in college. I
Speaker 1: have a fairly extensive vocabulary, but frequently I would find
Speaker 1: myself working on documents that were so full of jargon
Speaker 1: that I would have to bring the documents over to
Speaker 1: a consultant and say, what exactly do you mean when
Speaker 1: you say this? You know, I would highlight a passage
Speaker 1: and say what does this actually mean? Because I couldn't
Speaker 1: really edit or produce documents if I didn't understand the
Speaker 1: meaning because it might mean I could let something go
Speaker 1: out of the office that was incorrect, and it was
Speaker 1: incorrect because I didn't understand what was actually being meant
Speaker 1: and whether or not the consultant was accurate in their language.
Speaker 1: So I would have to talk with these consultants on
Speaker 1: a very frank level and say, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: understand what each individual word means in this sentence, but
Speaker 1: can you tell me what the overall meaning is? What
Speaker 1: are you actually getting at when you say this? And
Speaker 1: if they could tell me in plain English, then I
Speaker 1: would ask them, so, why don't you say it that
Speaker 1: way in this report? Why are you using language that
Speaker 1: is so complicated or non intuitive that what you actually
Speaker 1: mean is hidden by that language? What good does that
Speaker 1: do you? My fear was that the consultants were writing
Speaker 1: these reports in a way to kind of hide the
Speaker 1: meaning because it gave them some wiggle room in the interpretations.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was maybe a little disingenuous, Like
Speaker 1: if you could word a report in such a way
Speaker 1: that two different people could come away with two totally
Speaker 1: different interpretations, and both interpretations are seemingly valid because you
Speaker 1: were purposefully vague or Uh, using very weird jargon in
Speaker 1: your descriptions, then you haven't really done your job. You
Speaker 1: haven't actually helped them in any way, because no one
Speaker 1: has any consensus on what to do next. So I
Speaker 1: found it very frustrating working in that world. Well, the
Speaker 1: same thing can happen with engineers, or really any profession
Speaker 1: that has its own jargon, from medicine to law, to
Speaker 1: science to content creation on the Internet. I've been to
Speaker 1: plenty of meetings where there's been a lot of discussion
Speaker 1: about things on the Internet, where I felt it was
Speaker 1: being unnecessarily complicated, where people were talking about buckets and verticals,
Speaker 1: and they're talking about all sorts of things and deliverables
Speaker 1: and asking to dialogue with someone, And I kept thinking,
Speaker 1: why are we using this language? There are other words
Speaker 1: we can use that everyone understands, that will convey exactly
Speaker 1: the meaning you you want, and yet we're progressively going
Speaker 1: to this this weird quasi language that that has a
Speaker 1: lot of ambiguity in it and therefore makes it harder
Speaker 1: to understand the meaning anyway. That was really what this
Speaker 1: piece was all about. There has to be a balance
Speaker 1: between precision that you get with the specific language that
Speaker 1: you were relying upon and clarity what you mean by
Speaker 1: that language. So this piece by student John H. Quick
Speaker 1: was really meant to raise the reliance of jargon two
Speaker 1: ridiculous extremes, to say, if we really crank up the
Speaker 1: jargon speak in a piece, you realize how silly it
Speaker 1: can get. And the joke may well have died a
Speaker 1: quiet death on its own, or maybe only been something
Speaker 1: that engineers would joke about, just an inside joke among them,
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for Time Magazine. The Arthur d
Speaker 1: Old Industrial Bulletin in the United States would take this
Speaker 1: piece and publish it in ninety six, but that didn't
Speaker 1: exactly hit mainstream readership. It did, however, get some attention
Speaker 1: by people who would review technical documents, and in April
Speaker 1: of that year, Time Magazine ran the piece with the
Speaker 1: title for No for Trunnions. It was produced without an
Speaker 1: overt nod that the whole thing was a wind up,
Speaker 1: and the people at Time Magazine knew it was a joke,
Speaker 1: but they were presenting it as if it were a
Speaker 1: realistic document. Some readers were legitimately flabbergasted. They thought it
Speaker 1: was meant as an actual example of engineering, but other
Speaker 1: people actually picked up on the joke and ran with it.
Speaker 1: Stanton Tompkins, for example, wrote to Time Magazine and included
Speaker 1: the comment, may I add that if the bearings are
Speaker 1: lubricated with warm smorch, they will not grune. Others added
Speaker 1: equally nonsensical comments to push the joke further. One that's
Speaker 1: frequently mentioned is from a guy named Ernest In Kerman.
Speaker 1: He wrote in and said, after being advised and cerebral
Speaker 1: lee malliated by one point five no fur trunnions from
Speaker 1: a magitudinitative zero four or five one gmt to an
Speaker 1: epin nocturnal proximate eleven fifty five e s T. I
Speaker 1: felt the need of spiri in animating filiperative and therefore
Speaker 1: submersonized my hypercincinate indoderm in a five percent Fijian nate
Speaker 1: by Carbo la kai nat ing Kepsi pola little slightly
Speaker 1: veiled pepsi cola reference. They're still The joke could have
Speaker 1: faded away from memory after the Time Magazine piece weren't
Speaker 1: not for the determination of a few jokesters in the
Speaker 1: engineering world to give it a shot in the arm
Speaker 1: every few decades. Like the instrument department at General Electric
Speaker 1: they wrote up an entire data sheet on the fictional
Speaker 1: turbo encabulator. More on that in just moment, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. On December one, nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: the Instrument Department at GE released a fact sheet on
Speaker 1: the turbo encabulator. By the way, I've seen turbo encabulator
Speaker 1: presented as both a single word and as two words
Speaker 1: as turbo incabulator, so dealer's choice. I guess both appear
Speaker 1: throughout engineering joke literature. The fact sheet, however, really helps
Speaker 1: clear things up. For example, the function of the turbo
Speaker 1: encabulator is made clear by this fact sheet. It's quote
Speaker 1: to measure inverse reactive current in unilateral phase detractors with
Speaker 1: a display of percent realization end quote. So finally we
Speaker 1: know what's going on, right. Much of the fact sheet
Speaker 1: is drawn directly from Quick's description of the turbo encabulator
Speaker 1: from back. Other parts gleefully build upon the nonsense. For example,
Speaker 1: there is a section on the fact sheet about the
Speaker 1: application of the device that reads, quote caution because of
Speaker 1: the replenorative flow characteristics of positive ions and unilateral phase detractors,
Speaker 1: the use of quasi static regeneration oscillator is recommended if
Speaker 1: turbo encabulator is used in explosive atmospheres. End quote. The
Speaker 1: fact sheet actually includes an image of the supposed device,
Speaker 1: the first image that I could actually find on record
Speaker 1: this version. If you were to look at it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a cylinder mounted on its side on
Speaker 1: a small stand, so think of like a like a
Speaker 1: water bottle, but you have it on its side. On
Speaker 1: one end of this cylinder is a fan that sticks
Speaker 1: out of the end. There's a length of piping that
Speaker 1: stretches across the top of the turbo encabulator, so again
Speaker 1: like it would be the side of the cylinder, but
Speaker 1: the top of the device. And there's some other details
Speaker 1: on this as well, although it's hard to make out
Speaker 1: because I've only seen scans of the original document and
Speaker 1: they tend to be pretty low quality scans, so it's
Speaker 1: hard to make out details. The entire write up followed
Speaker 1: the format of official g E standards for product documentation,
Speaker 1: so the people who made this actually made it so
Speaker 1: it looked exactly like any standard g E documentation. They
Speaker 1: followed all the rules and it was inserted into the
Speaker 1: official GE handbook. Now I'm sure that those who painstaking
Speaker 1: lee read through the entire handbook were amused or maybe
Speaker 1: befuddled by the joke. Also, I feel this is a
Speaker 1: good place to say that it pays to read through
Speaker 1: employee handbooks because you never know when someone's going to
Speaker 1: slip in a joke. And as someone who has actually
Speaker 1: designed employee handbooks in the past, I'd also say it
Speaker 1: is incredibly satisfying to put jokes into official materials, you know,
Speaker 1: so long as those jokes aren't going to backfire on you.
Speaker 1: So I would actually recommend getting official approval before getting
Speaker 1: wacky with the official handbook. It is good to see
Speaker 1: why a in those cases. Still, at this point, we're
Speaker 1: talking about print representations of this ridiculous notion. In ninety seven,
Speaker 1: the Turbo Encabulator made the transition from page to screen.
Speaker 1: An actor named Bud Haggart, who was well known for
Speaker 1: voiceover and industrial film performances, took on the role of
Speaker 1: an engineer delivering a matter of fact explanation of the
Speaker 1: turbo Encabulator. The script was nearly word for word Quick's
Speaker 1: original piece in ninety four. It was edited a bit
Speaker 1: but had essentially the same flow, and it was helped
Speaker 1: with meaningless diagrams and sketches that Haggard would point to
Speaker 1: throughout his delivery as if he was actually pointing at
Speaker 1: the physical components of this fictional device. His tone and
Speaker 1: approach made it so like he was talking about something
Speaker 1: that any kid could understand with relative ease. It was brilliant.
Speaker 1: According to Internet lore, Hanard proposed doing the short as
Speaker 1: an add on after an official short film for GMC
Speaker 1: was shot. It was an industrial film about one of
Speaker 1: their truck lines. So he goes in. He does this
Speaker 1: commercial shoot for GMC about their truck lines, and he
Speaker 1: works with the film crew, and then afterwards he takes
Speaker 1: the film crew aside. He talks to the director, whose
Speaker 1: name was Dave Ron Dutt, and he asks them to
Speaker 1: stay after so that he might shoot a short film
Speaker 1: that is based off the turbo encabulator piece. Haggard had
Speaker 1: actually written the script based on that n article and
Speaker 1: made it something that he could create a presentation out of.
Speaker 1: And industrial films were something of a of a big
Speaker 1: deal in the seventies and eighties, and they could actually
Speaker 1: make the rounds within an industry. So this nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: seven fake industrial film that Haggard made made the rounds,
Speaker 1: and some folks over at Chrysler saw it. So in
Speaker 1: Chrysler hired Haggard to come over and shoot a new
Speaker 1: version of his turbo encabulator presentation at Chrysler's facility, and
Speaker 1: it was purporting to be a new product from the
Speaker 1: auto company. In this case, he had some actual machinery
Speaker 1: to gesture toward while delivering his presentation, but none of
Speaker 1: the things he was pointing to had anything to do
Speaker 1: with what he was actually saying. Cat's cuttle fish to
Speaker 1: the second oil age and his kingdom with fur of darkness.
Speaker 1: I don't dispute the eurostata, but if he's down here,
Speaker 1: not blood but darkness, the earth's black riches, I could
Speaker 1: taste it on my lips. Today, I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the science of transgenesis Genesis time show. WHOA.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what what happened just there? That was
Speaker 1: That was odd um? All right? Well, getting back into
Speaker 1: it talking about the films. Both the original video or
Speaker 1: film rather that Haggard shot and the Chrysler version of
Speaker 1: the presentation are available online. You can watch both of
Speaker 1: them and you can find them on YouTube. You can
Speaker 1: find them on other platforms as well, And there is
Speaker 1: no way at all that I could deliver the techno
Speaker 1: babble with the same dead pan skill as Mr Haggard.
Speaker 1: It is a masterpiece of dead pan humor. It's also
Speaker 1: pretty clear that he wasn't using any Q cards or
Speaker 1: a teleprompter. His eyes hold steady the entire time. They
Speaker 1: don't have the tell tale scanning motions you get when
Speaker 1: you're watching someone who's reading from Q cards or a teleprompter.
Speaker 1: If you've ever watched Saturday Night Live, if you ever
Speaker 1: even watched videos that I have done. I've done several
Speaker 1: videos without a teleprompter, and I've done videos with teleprompters.
Speaker 1: And if you watch my eyes, you can tell which
Speaker 1: one you're seeing because you can see that I'm actually
Speaker 1: reading something on the teleprompter one. So I get really
Speaker 1: sensitive to this kind of thing. I notice it pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: I think most people do, but it jumps out at me.
Speaker 1: So I wondered at first how he did it, Like,
Speaker 1: how did he actually memorize this incredibly dense list of jargon. Well,
Speaker 1: according to the director Ron Dot, the nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 1: version was done with an audio prompter. It was a
Speaker 1: wired earpiece that connected to a real to real tape recorder.
Speaker 1: Uh so Haggard had gone and recorded the entire speech
Speaker 1: on to the reel to reel and he used the
Speaker 1: earpiece as a prompter for himself. Now, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how difficult that was to do at pace where you're
Speaker 1: delivering it right after you're hearing it. Because if you've
Speaker 1: ever tried to speak well hearing your own audio, you
Speaker 1: know that that can get really difficult. You can find
Speaker 1: it very disorienting and disconcerting. So maybe he practiced it
Speaker 1: enough to speak the piece in time with the recorded version,
Speaker 1: sort of like singing along to the radio when a
Speaker 1: song is playing, you might find that, oh, I know
Speaker 1: all the lyrics when I sing along to the radio,
Speaker 1: but if you asked me to try and sing the
Speaker 1: lyrics on my own without the song playing, suddenly I
Speaker 1: start having trouble. Maybe it was something like that, I
Speaker 1: don't know. The Chrysler video has a follow up part
Speaker 1: and there's another actor who talks about the diagnosis and
Speaker 1: service of the turbo encabulator. That segment includes even more
Speaker 1: techno babble and jargon, adding yet more complexity to the
Speaker 1: overall joke. Now, I'm not going to go into the
Speaker 1: whole script like I did with the original publication, but
Speaker 1: I do want to point out a couple of favorite
Speaker 1: parts of mine. The presenter says, for the purposes of obscurity,
Speaker 1: we have removed the casing to expose the heart of
Speaker 1: the turbo encabulator, the magneto reluctance modial interactor. Since little
Speaker 1: or nothing is known about the principles involved in magneto reluctance,
Speaker 1: diagnosing faults can be a problem that to me is
Speaker 1: absolutely hysterical. The notion that we have built an important
Speaker 1: piece of technology without an understanding of the underlying science
Speaker 1: that makes it work is already pretty amusing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't understand how something works, how would you
Speaker 1: know when something is wrong. There's also a terrible pun
Speaker 1: in that segment, in which the presenter says a diagnostic
Speaker 1: tool will display any faults in code, adding quote it's
Speaker 1: a simple head code. Anyone can catch it end quote
Speaker 1: That in turn might be a bit of a joke theft,
Speaker 1: because I actually recall that the absurdist radio comedy group
Speaker 1: Fire Sign Theater had a similar joke about a simple
Speaker 1: schoolboy code that anyone could catch. In general, the Chrysler
Speaker 1: video makes it more apparent that the whole thing is
Speaker 1: done for laughs. It is less of a uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's less done as a serious piece the original piece.
Speaker 1: If you didn't know better, if you were completely naive
Speaker 1: about engineering, you might think, while this is just I
Speaker 1: don't understand any of it. I have no idea what
Speaker 1: this thing does. But if you know what he's talking about,
Speaker 1: or at least no enough to know that it's nonsense,
Speaker 1: then it's a joke. Well, in this case, the Chrysler
Speaker 1: version is more obviously a joke. Another video that will
Speaker 1: pop up if you search for turbo encabulator is from
Speaker 1: Rockwell Automation, produced in nine, which tells us that seems
Speaker 1: like we get a new version every decade or so,
Speaker 1: because the first one came out in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: the next one came out in the late eighties, and
Speaker 1: then you have nine or so for the third one.
Speaker 1: The company Rockwell Automation started at the big ending of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, a different company name, but what would
Speaker 1: evolve into Rockwell Automation traces its history back that far.
Speaker 1: The company creates industrial automation technology for other companies, so
Speaker 1: it's not exactly the place you would expect to find humor.
Speaker 1: But Rockwell produced their own video in the spirit of
Speaker 1: the Turbo Encabulator, this time called the Retro Encabulator. Actor
Speaker 1: Mike Craft served as the host of the video, and
Speaker 1: Craft had done presentations at industry conferences and events on
Speaker 1: behalf of companies like Alan Bradley for years. Craft had
Speaker 1: discovered the Bud Haggart piece many years earlier and had
Speaker 1: memorized it, and I didn't realize it at first when
Speaker 1: I was watching it. But Craft also was the repair
Speaker 1: technician who did the follow up segment in Haggart's Chrysler video,
Speaker 1: so he actually got to work with Bud Haggart at
Speaker 1: Chrysler and then was able to do the full presentation
Speaker 1: over at Rockwell. Also, like Haggard, Craft used an ear prompter,
Speaker 1: although at this point we were talking about a wireless one,
Speaker 1: not a fired one. Like the Chrysler video, the Rockwell
Speaker 1: one makes use of actual devices to illustrate the point.
Speaker 1: With Chrysler, the device would be like transmission parts, you know,
Speaker 1: they were car parts, but with Rockwell it was actually
Speaker 1: electrical wall panels. That Craft was opening up and using
Speaker 1: to illustrate his fictional points. The video also featured shoutouts
Speaker 1: to Rockwell customers like Dodge, Alan Bradley and Alliance Electric,
Speaker 1: and claiming that the incabulator was really a joint effort
Speaker 1: between these different companies, but the description of the device
Speaker 1: was again largely the same as the original nineteen forty
Speaker 1: four Right up, and you should check out retro incabulator
Speaker 1: dot com because you'll be directed to Mic Craft's acting website.
Speaker 1: The joke survives to this day with side shows Hank
Speaker 1: Green delivering a performance just a few years ago, I
Speaker 1: think two thousand thirteen, and there was an April Fool's
Speaker 1: Day joke and he again delivers it exactly the way
Speaker 1: you would expect Hank Green to do it per lely,
Speaker 1: and it does a masterful job as well. Those of
Speaker 1: you who remember my series Forward Thinking, you might be
Speaker 1: amused to know that our series director, Dan Bush wanted
Speaker 1: me to do a version of the turbo encabulator as
Speaker 1: an April Fool's joke for the show, to do a
Speaker 1: full Forward Thinking episode about the turbo encabulator. We never
Speaker 1: could get clear approval to move forward on that, so
Speaker 1: it never happened. I guess I should be thankful, because
Speaker 1: I'm absolutely certain shooting a video version of that would
Speaker 1: have required countless takes to get it right. In fact,
Speaker 1: I imagine I would still be in the studio today
Speaker 1: if that were the case. So that's the story about
Speaker 1: the turbo encabulator. But I've got more to say about
Speaker 1: jargon and techno babble in just a moment. But let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break, all right, So let's talk a
Speaker 1: bit about techno babble or sometimes known as techno speak,
Speaker 1: which you could call a trope. Trope means a couple
Speaker 1: of different things. Yes, I should really define what I
Speaker 1: mean by it, since I'm talking all about being precise
Speaker 1: and clear. So in this case, a trope, as I'm
Speaker 1: I'm using it, refers to some sort of common literary
Speaker 1: or rhetorical device, something that is used frequently enough to
Speaker 1: be part of a common language or even a cliche. Uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even have to be language. It can be
Speaker 1: a specific sort of events. So a horror movie trope,
Speaker 1: a very common horror movie trope might be something like
Speaker 1: let's split up. You see that in horror movies all
Speaker 1: the time. You already know what that means. When when
Speaker 1: characters say let's split up, you know that means that
Speaker 1: whatever the the antagonist is in the horror movie, whether
Speaker 1: it's a slasher or a ghost or goblins or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be, they're gonna get somebody because they split
Speaker 1: up and they're more vulnerable. So splitting up is always
Speaker 1: a great idea in the context of a horror movie.
Speaker 1: And you can subvert tropes too. You don't have to
Speaker 1: just fulfill tropes. You could do a horror movie where
Speaker 1: you say let's split up. Everyone splits up, and then
Speaker 1: everyone is fine until they get back together again. Then
Speaker 1: you have subverted the trope. But that you're you're depending
Speaker 1: on the audience being aware that there is a trope,
Speaker 1: that you have subverted their expectations. But the reason they
Speaker 1: have the expectations is because the trope existed in the
Speaker 1: first place. So techno speak is one of those devices
Speaker 1: used by writers to create what sounds like a sophisticated
Speaker 1: explanation of a technology but tends to be total nonsense,
Speaker 1: or the very least is overly complicated and verbose. So
Speaker 1: I thought I would include some of my favorite examples
Speaker 1: and include a little context as well, and I don't
Speaker 1: want to cast too much shade here. It is really
Speaker 1: challenging to write science fiction in a believable way because
Speaker 1: you're typically describing things that don't exist in our real world.
Speaker 1: Maybe they exist in some warm but you're talking about
Speaker 1: a more advanced version, or maybe you're talking about a
Speaker 1: brand new technology that has no basis in reality as
Speaker 1: as it stands right now, and you have to find
Speaker 1: words to describe it. And you don't want it to
Speaker 1: sound like Caveman trying to describe television. You want to
Speaker 1: sound like it exists within the time and place that
Speaker 1: you have set your story. So you have to have
Speaker 1: that balance. How do you create words and phrases that
Speaker 1: have meaning within your world and aren't just seen as
Speaker 1: being complete nonsense to everybody else. I don't have the
Speaker 1: answer to that question, By the way. This is a
Speaker 1: hard thing to do. So there's some stiff competition around
Speaker 1: various franchises for the most frequent use of techno speak. Now,
Speaker 1: I personally would give the trophy over to the Star
Speaker 1: Trek franchise, not the original series so much because I
Speaker 1: believe it or not, Star Trek the original series wasn't
Speaker 1: quite so flagrant about throwing around jargon. You got some,
Speaker 1: but not tons of it. It wasn't like it was really,
Speaker 1: you know ingrained in every single episode. The show did
Speaker 1: feature fictional technologies like warp drives, phasers, transporters, those sort
Speaker 1: of things, but you didn't get a lot of techno
Speaker 1: babble about those things. You might just get fire the phasers.
Speaker 1: Then Star Trek the Next Generation debuted, and initially it
Speaker 1: was similar to the original series, and it was fairly
Speaker 1: light on techno speak. But then after the series creator
Speaker 1: Gene Roddenberry passed away, and after the Star Trek Technical
Speaker 1: Manual came out. The technical manual attempted to give valid
Speaker 1: explanations for how all the technology and Star Trek the
Speaker 1: Next Generation actually worked, which meant it was largely a
Speaker 1: work of speculative fiction in of itself. Once those two
Speaker 1: things happened, writers began to insert more and more techno
Speaker 1: babble into the show. And, like I said, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty tough gig. You They had to describe technology that
Speaker 1: would exist centuries from today. It's hard enough to predict
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in five years. Anyone who's listened
Speaker 1: to my technology prediction episodes. Know that it's hard enough
Speaker 1: to describe what's going to happen in the next year,
Speaker 1: let alone three hundred years from now, and so there
Speaker 1: was some imaginative use of terminology that was necessary, but
Speaker 1: the writers kind of went a little nutty with it
Speaker 1: in the later seasons of the Next Generation and then
Speaker 1: the following Star Trek series. I haven't gone through every
Speaker 1: episode of the Next Generation to keep it tally, but
Speaker 1: the example that always leaps to my mind with Star
Speaker 1: Trek the Next Generation is the ubiquitous reverse the polarity.
Speaker 1: The phrase was used as sort of a get out
Speaker 1: of crisis free card on episodes where the usual approach,
Speaker 1: whatever that might be, wasn't working. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: the Enterprise encountered an enemy Borg vessel that was attacking,
Speaker 1: the bridge, crew might try to reverse the polarity on
Speaker 1: the ship's shields to help repel the attack. Now, to
Speaker 1: be fair, the Star Trek writers didn't invent the idea
Speaker 1: of reversing the polarity. It had already had a distinguished
Speaker 1: run on the venerable UK series Doctor Who. Fans of
Speaker 1: classic Doctor Who, I'm talking about Doctor Who before the
Speaker 1: reboot with Eccleston and Tennant and all the rest. You
Speaker 1: might remember John Pertwee, who played the third doctor in
Speaker 1: the series. Reverse the polarity and later on, reverse the
Speaker 1: polarity of the neutron flow became a common phrase in
Speaker 1: Doctor Who episodes, finding its way across multiple doctors as
Speaker 1: the series continued, including doctors after the reboot. Peter Capaldi's
Speaker 1: doctor even subverted this trope in an episode in which
Speaker 1: he said, quote, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow.
Speaker 1: I bet that means something. It sounds great end quote.
Speaker 1: One of the critics is ms I've seen about Star
Speaker 1: Trek in general was that the reliance on meaningless techno
Speaker 1: speak acted as sort of a dios x makina literally
Speaker 1: in this sense, to get the crew out of danger
Speaker 1: without actually coming up with an approach that has any
Speaker 1: relevant meaning to the audience. Essentially, it was saying, the
Speaker 1: thing you're doing isn't working. Do the thing you're doing,
Speaker 1: but do it differently. I did the thing differently, it worked,
Speaker 1: we got away. That's not very satisfying once you strip
Speaker 1: away the techno babble. The techno babble helped kind of
Speaker 1: hide the weakness of that resolution. Other examples included routing
Speaker 1: an inverse takeion pulse through the main deflector dish that
Speaker 1: makes no sense of Tachyon is a hypothetical particle that
Speaker 1: can move faster than the speed of light. I have
Speaker 1: no idea what an inverse tachion would be, but that's
Speaker 1: one of the big examples that I tend to think
Speaker 1: about Star Trek. However, science fiction is not the only
Speaker 1: source of techno babble. There are others. Thrillers and procedurals
Speaker 1: also revel in techno babble. From time to time. Characters
Speaker 1: like Chloe O'Brien in twenty four or Abbey And in
Speaker 1: c I S frequently speak in techno babble, only to
Speaker 1: have someone else in the scene asked them to repeat
Speaker 1: what they said, quote unquote in English. Now frequently the
Speaker 1: English translation for the techno speak doesn't actually match up
Speaker 1: with whatever the techno speak was, which means the tech
Speaker 1: speak was totally superfluous. Though you could argue the writers
Speaker 1: were including it to try and create some sort of
Speaker 1: credibility for the character as an expert in his or
Speaker 1: her field, and not actually meant to move the story along.
Speaker 1: But to me, it's almost like you're treading water. You're
Speaker 1: having a character say, at least reportedly, say the same
Speaker 1: thing two different ways, except in reality they're saying nonsense
Speaker 1: one way and then something that makes sense the other way.
Speaker 1: Why would they not just use plain English in the
Speaker 1: first place? Now? Pretty sure that Shannon Morse and I
Speaker 1: Shannon Morse of Hack five covered some atrocious examples of
Speaker 1: techno babble in our episode about hacking in Hollywood. In fact,
Speaker 1: I remember that we specifically covered this one, but I
Speaker 1: want to talk about it again. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: examples of techno babble and hacking Hollywood style would be
Speaker 1: from c s I New York. It was from an
Speaker 1: episode called Taxi in which a character named Lindsay says,
Speaker 1: I'll create a g uy Actually, she says gooey. I'll
Speaker 1: create a gooey interface using visual basic see if I
Speaker 1: can track an IP address. So that's so wrong, It
Speaker 1: is hilariously wrong. This clip is available to watch on YouTube.
Speaker 1: If you're so inclined, you can just see that in
Speaker 1: this brief moment it lasts less than three seconds. I'll
Speaker 1: create a gooey interface using visual basics, see if I
Speaker 1: can track an IP address. It is so silly. Let's
Speaker 1: go through it step by step to kind of see
Speaker 1: how ridiculous this techno babble is. First of all, Lindsay
Speaker 1: says she's going to create a gooey interface that's already repetitive.
Speaker 1: It's like saying a T M machine or pen number.
Speaker 1: Gooey is g u I and it stands for graphical
Speaker 1: user interface. So she's going to create a graphical user
Speaker 1: interface interface, according to what she says. Also, a gooey
Speaker 1: is just a way to interact with the device. That's
Speaker 1: what interface means. It's the way you interface with your technology.
Speaker 1: It facilitates computer commands. It doesn't do anything special. It
Speaker 1: just allows you to do whatever you need to do
Speaker 1: on a device. But it itself is just a facilitator.
Speaker 1: So Windows is a gooey mac Os is a gooey.
Speaker 1: Smartphone user interfaces are gooey's because your your programs are
Speaker 1: represented by icons their pictures. Then you can click or
Speaker 1: press on the pictures and activate them and it launches
Speaker 1: into a program. But that's all it is. That's what
Speaker 1: the interface is. This is in contrast, by the way,
Speaker 1: with text based interfaces, in which you would have to
Speaker 1: type in commands and file names to get stuff done.
Speaker 1: So you might have to say run such and such
Speaker 1: dot e x c, and that would send a command
Speaker 1: to your computer to find that e x C file
Speaker 1: and to initiate it, whereas on a gooey you just
Speaker 1: click on whatever the icon is that represents that that
Speaker 1: particular program. As for visual Basic, that's the next part
Speaker 1: of Lindsay's line. Visual Basic was a programming language. I
Speaker 1: guess you could say it is a programming language, but
Speaker 1: we'll get to that. So I guess you could argue
Speaker 1: that that part of her statement made some sense, I suppose.
Speaker 1: But visual Basic relies on a gooey visual Basic. The
Speaker 1: reason why it's called visual is because it's a gooey
Speaker 1: interface to be repetitive again, to do programming. So a
Speaker 1: programmer would use visual Basic to create code, choosing snippets
Speaker 1: of code that was written in the basic programming language.
Speaker 1: Thus the name visual basic. Basic was designed as an
Speaker 1: educational tool primarily, and it made the transition to legacy
Speaker 1: status Visual Basic did in two thousand eight. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, this was a pretty limited programming language. It
Speaker 1: was a good tool for learning the basics of programming,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't exactly the most sophisticated or versatile programming
Speaker 1: language out there. Also, the c s I New York
Speaker 1: episode aired in two thousand eight, the same year Visual
Speaker 1: Basic was sunsetted as a legacy programming language. So now
Speaker 1: you've got Lindsay saying she's going to make a gooy
Speaker 1: with an outdated programming language. And by now it should
Speaker 1: be pretty obvious that an interface, even one so amazing
Speaker 1: that it was built in Visual Basic, wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to track an IP address at all. It's just an interface.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do anything other than act as a facilitator. Moreover,
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of ways to track I P addresses
Speaker 1: at Just looking at a server that's being contacted is enough,
Speaker 1: because the incoming traffic has to have an IP address
Speaker 1: associated with it, because that's how data communication works. Now,
Speaker 1: you might not have an accurate IP address. Someone might
Speaker 1: be using proxies but or VPNs and thus hiding their
Speaker 1: true IP addresses. But that's different. So that one throway
Speaker 1: line and c s I has led to tons of
Speaker 1: jokes on the Internet, including various attempts to build out
Speaker 1: what would be a gooey in Visual basics. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of visual gags out there. If you
Speaker 1: just do a search for CSI, New York g u I,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a ton of them. Now, sometimes the
Speaker 1: techno speak that a character says actually does mean something
Speaker 1: or almost mean something. So, for example, in the series Arrow,
Speaker 1: the character Felicity in one episode says, I have to
Speaker 1: break through the processor's protective firewall to stop cadence virus
Speaker 1: and the fact that the processor is exponentially overclocking and
Speaker 1: he's disabled the cooling system. And then she's interrupted by
Speaker 1: Green Arrow, who says he didn't understand any of that. Well,
Speaker 1: that particular sentence at least has some elements that makes sense.
Speaker 1: All of the things she says are real things, but
Speaker 1: the exponential overclocking would have to be an exaggeration. Processors
Speaker 1: have limits they cannot go beyond, even with overclocking. Um
Speaker 1: a processor has clock cycles essentially means how many instructions
Speaker 1: can this processor complete within a given amount of time,
Speaker 1: and and processor manufacturers create limits, like they make a
Speaker 1: hard limit for the number of processes per second that
Speaker 1: a clock can handle. But you can remove those limits
Speaker 1: with processors. That's what you call overclocking. You can make
Speaker 1: processors actually uh fulfill more instructions per second than they
Speaker 1: were rated for, at least up to a point. Eventually
Speaker 1: you reach whatever the maximum is that that processor can
Speaker 1: handle even with overclocking. So exponential is likely not the
Speaker 1: right word that would they'll be way too much. I
Speaker 1: doubt that any microprocess or manufacturer out there builds in
Speaker 1: enough capacity and then limits it enough for you to
Speaker 1: have exponential overclocking. Also, you wouldn't really have a firewall
Speaker 1: around a processor. Firewalls fit between internal and external networks.
Speaker 1: It's meant to protect the internal network from harmful forces
Speaker 1: from the outside, so like from the Internet. So a
Speaker 1: firewall would sit on a connection between machines and the Internet,
Speaker 1: but not so far down as the processor level. Still,
Speaker 1: I would say that this was a decent attempt at
Speaker 1: making a meaningful statement. It didn't fully hit the target,
Speaker 1: but again close, which is not great for a guy
Speaker 1: who uses arrows as his main means of weaponry. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there were two reasons I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: the turbo encabulator and techno babble. The first is I
Speaker 1: think the turbo encabulator is a pretty funny joe that
Speaker 1: pokes fun at the very human trade of trying to
Speaker 1: make stuff sound important. The second is that it reminds
Speaker 1: us this sort of language is used all the time,
Speaker 1: and not just an entertainment, not just to create things
Speaker 1: that make people sound smart. We run into it in
Speaker 1: marketing materials all the time, real world marketing materials aimed
Speaker 1: at selling stuff to us. So it's good to remember
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff is meant to dazzle us while
Speaker 1: not actually saying anything of substance. It's another example of
Speaker 1: why we should practice critical thinking whenever we can, because
Speaker 1: it could help us avoid making a really dumb decision
Speaker 1: because we were so impressed with what sounded like a
Speaker 1: sophisticated description that we never looked into it any further.
Speaker 1: This teaches us to learn what the actual definitions for
Speaker 1: words are, both the official definitions and the contextual definitions,
Speaker 1: and we know what they mean and what they do
Speaker 1: not mean. So words like quantum, which is forly overused
Speaker 1: and misused to a criminal level, is a dead giveaway
Speaker 1: that you need to pay really close attention. Or words
Speaker 1: like organic or natural. Heck, words like smart when applied
Speaker 1: to technology or other products, those are all things that
Speaker 1: mean you should probably take a closer look. It doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that the people who make that thing are
Speaker 1: out to fool you, but they might be taking some
Speaker 1: shortcuts when they're describing whatever it is they do, and
Speaker 1: you it's it's good to take that extra step to
Speaker 1: find out what is actually meant by that language. Being
Speaker 1: aware of techno babble makes it more challenging for other
Speaker 1: people to take advantage of you. It does not make
Speaker 1: you bulletproof, but it might mean you could sidestep a
Speaker 1: lie or a prank that might otherwise take you in.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a pretty valuable lesson for an
Speaker 1: April Fool's Day. And well, that wraps up this episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it. If
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes, you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with me send me an email. The address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can pop on over to our website that's tech
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