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Comment by nickpsecurity | Hacker News Reader

I think I have a pretty straight-forward answer to his question about its popularity: real-time became synonymous with instant results and zero delays to mainstream audiences. Not sure exactly from what sources but that's the common denominator across all of these usages.

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Real time used to be extremely difficult, therefore it was extremely well designed and engineered. Think of the engineering and quality level of a stereotypical multi-million dollar industrial machine with hard real time nanosecond level response. Jitter in the response rate can be measured and correlated with tool lifetime and product scrap rates, for example.

Think like a PR guy, use some empathy: Isn't complicated well engineered high quality stuff cool and easy to sell? I know, we'll call our Angry Birds tablet "real time". After all if "real time" is a phrase that sells five axis milling machine motor control systems, think how well it'll sell thermostats? Sure the engineers will be pissed off at the bastardization of their technical term but I'm paid on commission so who cares what they think... if they complain I'll call them "hackers" again to shut them up, that usually works pretty well.

Look how in mass media, "quantum" usually passes for the opposite of the technical physics definition.

There is an inherent danger where theres a profit motive in divide and conqueor style separation of people, the makers vs the consumers could eventually become as bad as the UK vs US two cultures separated by a common language.

I think it's devolved beyond that into a marketing term, I've seen realtime mean anything from milliseconds to hours. I'd mostly interpret it as "faster than what you already have/are used to".

I'd argue that GP is right, but only partially. It may be true that "real-time became synonymous with instant results and zero delays to mainstream audiences". But the story continues: then the sales&marketing folks and various other bullshitters noticed that "realtime = fast" and "fast = good", and they did what they always do - stared to stretch the term so that they can steal some of the good feelings associated with it, even though their products don't deserve them. It's what happened with the word "hacker", or is happening with the word "geek" right now. If something is associated with good qualities among relevant enough audience, it will be co-opted by marketing and then used and abused until it loses any meaning.

That's what I hate about sales&marketing - it will fuck up everything that's cool.

And journalism, I guess is to blame too (they are marketers too, competing for our attention). My pet peeve: ever heard about a company "going nuclear" or taking "a nuclear option"? That phrase should not be used to mean anything less serious than threatening to deploy an actual ICBM.

Your addition to my theory is probably right. I left it off just because I can't trace the specifics. Marketing and media are where I'd point the finger, though.

I'd say that real-time covering hours is less a marketing artifact but part of the academic definition that real-time means that guaranteed timing limits are kept, whatever size they have.

From the business analytics example, I think a useful layman's definition of "realtime" might be able to be extracted: "fast enough that, given the speed of the task the client is trying to accomplish, the client is never blocked waiting on the computation in such a way that it then performs suboptinally against its deadlines."

In machine-assisted translation, "realtime" is whatever speed (milliseconds) is fast enough to have a conversation without pausing. In business, "realtime" is whatever speed (minutes/hours) is fast enough that the feed of information outpaces your ability to absorb and change strategy in response to the information.

Interestingly, VR technology is "realtime" by both definitions: any perceptible latency (layman's definition) is unacceptable and causes feelings of "VR sickness"—so hard limits on frame delivery (technical definition) must be set. Or, "VR must be hard realtime in order to be realtime."

"I think a useful layman's definition of "realtime" might be able to be extracted: "fast enough that, given the speed of the task the client is trying to accomplish, the client is never blocked waiting on the computation in such a way that it then performs suboptinally against its deadlines.""

That's actually a reasonable definition that could lead to re-interpretation and new usage by lay people. VR is a good example. Matter of fact, we did use that in game design because we had to differentiate between what had no delay and the pre-rendered graphics used in cut-scenes. We normally just said gameplay footage but some said "rendered in real-time." Those using VRML (the "VWWW") on dial-up knew what the opposite of real-time was. ;)

I remember it really annoying me when I was in high school and I would see a minivan drive past that had "real time AWD." I think it was a Mazda, but I can't be sure.

As though without it there would be some sort of batch processing delay when driving the car...?

Even the Flintstones didn't have to batch it all the way. Wonder who Mazda's real competition is?

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