The Importance of Language in Organizational Transformation

Issue 157, April 25, 2024

Think about this for a moment.  The English language we speak is referred to as Modern English dating back to 1450. It‘s related to the emergence of the printing press and was adopted through the expanded volume of printed materials including Shakespeare in the late 1500s and the King James Bible in 1611 (study.com). That was over 570 years ago.  If you’re following us here, it might dawn on you to ask: How can a language that old possibly describe, accommodate, and explain technology and all its ramifications as well the problems, situations, and environments we now find ourselves in?

We are by no means linguists, but we worry about how ordinary people can comprehend the complexities of concepts including coding, quantum computing, random access memory, asynchronous programming language, binary electrical signals, crypto, blockchain, and qubits. How do we explain what those terms even mean? How do we articulate concepts and ultimately the meaningful language t…