What's the Matter With Metadata?

Whenever something happens that people want to explain away, some new technical term pops out into the public discourse. It's impossible to predict what the next phrase will be, but the pattern is consistent and it's always interesting.

You take a phrase with a legitimate meaning in a technical context and say it over and over in a non-technical context. It makes everything slippery. People have to jump through mental hoops to integrate the new terminology, and you get all this wiggle room to nitpick whether some argument applies to it. You can claim it means something technical and specific if you need to, and continue to use it vaguely when you want it the other way.

I don't have a ready list of the most recent ones I've noticed, but "weapons of mass destruction," "enhanced interrogation," and "enemy combatants" are some good oldies. "Wardrobe malfunction" too.

Anyway, I never would have guessed "metadata" would join the ranks.