Be creative and collaborate...and be transparent

I enjoy reading Evgeny Morozov's guest column on the dark side of technophilia.

This weeks column brings to mind something I've been thinking of for a long time--the pervasive use of words with little meaning.

"Creativity" and "collaboration" are two such words that annoy me when used in a mindless way (and used in mindless ways they are).

In the context of technology, Morozov takes on the word "openness." Open, he says, is now a word that has a "lot of sex appeal," yet "very little analytical content." 

Openness is the latest opiate of the (i-pad totting) masses [...] Certified as “open,” the most heinous and suspicious ideas suddenly become acceptable. Even the Church of Scientology boasts of its “commitment to open communication. [...] Openness is today a powerful cult, a religion with its own dogmas. 

Then again,

For many institutions, “open” has become the new “green.” And in the same way that companies will “greenwash” their initiatives by invoking eco-friendly window dressing to hide less-palatable practices, there has also emerged a term to describe similar efforts to read “openness” into situations and environments where it doesn’t exist: “openwashing.”

I feel that like the "openness," "creativity" and "collaboration" have become powerful cults with their own set of dogmas. Be "creative" or perish, yet nobody can with pinpoint precision tell what constitutes creativity and what doesn't.