Requiem For An Acronym

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Larry Anderson, Editor

We have commented before in this space about how our industry is changing and how that change is reflected in the language we speak.

Here is a corollary: Even as new terms enter our lexicon, others fall into disfavor and, inevitably, sooner or later, will disappear.

Today, I would like to propose that we abolish one of the industry's most commonly uttered terms: CCTV.

Any reader who has followed the quantum developmental leaps in digital video is probably not particularly surprised by the proposal. But consider this: If I had suggested such a thing 12 years ago when I started editing this magazine, it would have been the equivalent of suggesting we abolish the words “air” and “water” from the English language. That's how prevalent the term was.

Even so, I have to admit, the term has bothered me from the start. It's a common abbreviation, but does absolutely everybody know what it means? Is there a hyphen in closed-circuit? What is a closed circuit anyway?

Clearly, today's video systems are anything but closed. Video is everywhere, in every format, wired and wireless, digital and analog, smart and not-so-smart, panned, tilted and zoomed across the Internet in every conceivable way.

So the term CCTV doesn't begin to apply to today's video systems. It's just plain passé. So 1980s. It had its time — a nice, long life as today's technology terms go. Let's just leave it to the scrapheap of history, and delete it from this magazine's pages.

(Excuse the sentiment, but I miss it already.)

We welcome your feedback: E-mail landerson@securitysolutions.com

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