Agnostic: Help Right A Wrong

I saw it again. This time I had to speak up. I was reading a Doc Searls post, and he referred to a story in the Washington City Paper. That story used the term platform agnostic. What are these people thinking? Doc is excused because he is simply quoting a source, but there is no excuse for the Washington City Paper because this was a quote from the “paper’s top gun.” If this was an isolated instance, I’d just shut up, but I keep seeing this term—or similar terms using agnostic— more and more. As we say in the marketing business, “It’s got legs.” Here’s the Washington City Paper usage:

All this media diversification has left some staffers wondering where the emphasis falls—on the print product? The Web? Radio? One Post employee put this very question last week to Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. in a staff meeting. The paper’s top gun responded that the Post needed to become “platform-agnostic.”

What definition of agnostic are they referring to? According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, here is the meaning of agnostic:

n. a person who believes that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God or an ultimate cause, or anything beyond material phenomena—adj. of or characteristic of an agnostic or agnosticism.

I mean Webster is the source isn’t it? The biggest stretch to squeeze in a justification on this usage might be dictionary.com where the definition looks like this:

n.
  1.
      a. One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God.
      b. One who is skeptical about the existence of God but does not profess true atheism.
  2. One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.

adj.
  1. Relating to or being an agnostic.
  2. Doubtful or noncommittal: “Though I am agnostic on what terms to use, I have no doubt that human infants come with an enormous ‘acquisitiveness’ for discovering patterns” (William H. Calvin).

Most people who use the term platform agnostic, operating system (OS) agnostic, or code agnostic really seem to be implying the word neutral, unbiased, independent, or is available on many [fill in the blank]. The Washington City Paper is not “doubtful” or “noncommittal” about how to present a story. According to their top gun, they need to become committed to presenting in any form their audience wants—newspaper story, blog, podcast, radio story, etc. People or companies that claim their software is operating-system agnostic are really saying that it works on multiple operating systems.

All of the above does not take into account that the most common usage of the word agnostic is in contrast to the word atheist. The word agnostic comes from the the writings of Thomas Huxley who back in 1869 coined the term to emphasize his belief that the existence of God is unknowable. The term has often been contrasted or confused with the word atheist which is someone who believes God does not exist.

OK—time to end this rant. Someone got this thing rolling and I need your help to stop it. I believe this is a misappropriation of Mr. Huxley’s perfectly good word and if what you really want to say is that “we are committed to offering our story on multiple media platforms,” or that “our software works with most of the popular operating systems,” then say it. If there is some other nuance you have in mind, I think there are far better choices than coupling something with agnostic.