How the Tech Industry Learned Nothing from Calling It "Dial-Up Internet" When There Was No Dial

Welcome to the Show, Folks

[Imagine me on stage with a sledgehammer and a stack of AI whitepapers instead of a watermelon]

So I've been reading these AI industry blogs, and I gotta ask... Why do we call it "Retrieval-Augmented Generation" when we're really doing "Generation-Augmented Retrieval"? Think about it. You're not retrieving something to help you generate an answer. You're generating a query to help you retrieve context to help you generate another answer. It's like calling a telephone a "talk-receiver" when you do both!

And don't even get me started on why it's called RAG when it sounds like something you clean up a mess with. "Hey, wipe up that spilled data with your Retrieval-Augmented Generation!" But here's the thing—we've been here before.

Remember When We "Dialed" the Internet?

The year was 1995. You'd sit down at your computer, open a program, and "dial up" to connect to the internet. But there was NO DIAL. No rotary. No push buttons. No nothing! You just clicked "Connect" and listened to robots having a stroke: BEEEE-OOOO-KSSSHHHH-BING-BONG.

Why "dial"? Because in 1962, telephone modems used actual dial tones. But by 1995? We kept the word after we killed the thing! Just like how we "tape" shows on our DVR. Or "rewind" Netflix. Or say we're going to "Xerox" something on a Canon printer. Tech vocabulary is a graveyard of dead metaphors we refuse to bury. And now AI is doing it AGAIN. Let me walk you through the greatest hits...

Act 1: "RAG" (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

The Gallagher Question:

Why is it "Retrieval-Augmented" when the RETRIEVAL is doing the AUGMENTING? Shouldn't it be "Generation-Assisted Retrieval"? Or "Answer-With-Homework"? Or just "Claude Remembered to Study"?

Historical Parallel:

Remember when we called it "Copy and Paste" but the original STAYED? That's not a copy—that's a CLONE! A copy means the original is gone. We should've called it "Clone and Paste" or "Replicate and Paste." But no. We called it "Copy" because Xerox invented "cut and paste" with actual scissors in 1974, and we just... kept the dead metaphor. Same thing with RAG. We're hauling around terminology from 2020 research papers that made sense to five PhD students and nobody else.

The Industry Comedy:

• Anthropic calls it "Contextual Retrieval" (okay, better)
• OpenAI calls it "GPT with retrieval" (boring but accurate)
• Microsoft calls it "Azure AI Search" (WHERE'S THE SEARCH? It's all in the cloud!)

Everyone's trying to rename the same thing. It's like when every company tried to rename the "cloud" in 2010:

• Amazon: "Elastic Compute"
• Microsoft: "Azure" (which means "blue sky" in Spanish—get it? CLOUD!)
• Google: Just... "Google"

We ended up calling it "cloud" because at least we all agreed on the metaphor, even if nobody could find the actual clouds.

Act 2: "Prompt Orchestration"

The Gallagher Question:

Why "orchestration" when there's NO MUSIC? When I orchestrate something, I expect violins! Cellos! Maybe a tuba! Not a JSON pipeline with error handlers.

Historical Parallel:

Remember "The Information Superhighway"? Al Gore said it in 1993. We were gonna have high-speed data lanes, exit ramps, rest stops with digital bathrooms... Except there were NO LANES. NO CARS. NO HIGHWAY. Just computers talking to each other through phone lines. But we called it a "highway" because, well, metaphors are easier than explaining packet switching. Now we have:

• Microsoft's "Semantic Kernel" (it's not a kernel, it's a library)
• "LangChain" (it's not a chain, it's a graph)
• "LlamaIndex" (there are no llamas, no index)

The industry LOVES misleading metaphors.

What Should We Call It?

How about "Context Sandwich Builder"? Or "Prompt Assembly Line"? Or just "The Thing That Makes Claude Smarter Before You Talk To It"?

Act 3: "Guardrails"

The Gallagher Question:

Guardrails keep you ON the road. These keep you OFF certain roads. If I hit a guardrail while driving, I bounce back onto the highway. I don't get a pop-up saying "ERROR 403: This road requires compliance training." These aren't guardrails. These are ROADBLOCKS. Or SECURITY CHECKPOINTS. Or "No, Claude, Bad Claude" Rules.

Historical Parallel:

Remember when we called it "Surfing the Web"? You're not surfing. You're clicking links. Surfers ride waves. You're riding... hypertext? But we called it "surfing" because in 1992, some librarian thought "information browsing" sounded boring, so she invented "surfing" and here we are, 30 years later, still using ocean metaphors for sitting at a desk.

The Industry Comedy:

Everyone has their own name for the same concept:

• NVIDIA: "NeMo Guardrails" (Finding Nemo reference? Nemo doesn't guard anything!)
• AWS: "Bedrock Guardrails" (Bedrock is the BOTTOM, not the SIDES)
• Anthropic: "Constitutional AI" (finally! An honest metaphor!)

At least "Constitutional AI" makes sense. It's rules the AI has to follow. Like a constitution. Nobody's pretending it's a physical barrier.

Act 4: "Agentic Memory"

The Gallagher Question:

Why "agentic" memory when the AGENT has ALREADY existed the WHOLE TIME? Was it previously "non-agentic memory"? "Memory-free agents"? "Agents with amnesia"? And why "long-term" when it lasts FOREVER? Long-term is like... a rental lease. 12 months. This is PERMANENT RECORDS. It's like calling your birth certificate "long-term identification."

Historical Parallel:

Remember when we called it "CC" on emails? "CC" stands for "Carbon Copy." Okay, what's carbon? It's that paper you put between two sheets so when you type on a typewriter, you get TWO COPIES. When was the last time you saw a typewriter? 1987? Yet we're STILL SAYING "CC" in 2025! It should be "Also Send To" or "Additional Recipients" or literally ANYTHING OTHER than a reference to carbon paper that nobody under 40 has ever seen.

The Industry Comedy:

• Mem0 (Why the zero? Is Mem1 taken?)
• "Episodic Memory" (like a TV episode? What?)
• "Semantic Memory" (as opposed to... non-semantic memory? Random memory?)

Act 5: "Self-Improving AI"

The Gallagher Question:

It's not SELF-improving if a HUMAN has to APPROVE it! That's like me saying I'm "self-cleaning" because I take a shower when my wife tells me to. It's SUPERVISED IMPROVEMENT. Or ASSISTED IMPROVEMENT. Or "The AI Suggests, You Decide".

Historical Parallel:

Remember "AUTO-PILOT" on planes? It's not automatic. The pilot has to turn it on, monitor it, and turn it off. It doesn't just wake up and fly the plane. But we called it "auto" because in 1912, the Sperry Corporation wanted to sell their invention and "auto" sounded FUTURISTIC. Now we have:

• "Auto-Tune" (you still have to sing)
• "Autopay" (you still have to set it up and have money)
• "Auto-Correct" (and how's THAT working out? "Duck you!")

Nothing is TRULY automatic. It's all HUMAN-INITIATED AUTOMATION. Just like AI doesn't TRULY self-improve. It PROPOSES improvements and waits for HUMAN APPROVAL.

What Should We Call It?

"Suggestion-Based Improvement"? Or "AI That Learns But Waits for Permission"? Or just "Claude Raises His Hand"?

The Big Finish: Why Does This Keep Happening?

[Pulls out sledgehammer] Here's the pattern:

1. Researchers invent something complicated (RAG, prompt orchestration, guardrails)
2. They name it using an ANALOGY (retrieval! orchestration! rails!)
3. The analogy BREAKS IMMEDIATELY (it's not really retrieval, there's no orchestra, rails don't block)
4. Everyone keeps using the BAD METAPHOR anyway (because renaming is HARD)
5. Five years later, we're STUCK with it (like "dialing" the internet)

And you know what the WORST PART is? [Raises sledgehammer over a whitepaper labeled "Hierarchical Contextual RAG with Self-Improvement"]

WE KNOW IT'S CONFUSING AND WE KEEP DOING IT ANYWAY!

WHAM! [Smashes whitepaper]

What Should We Actually Call This Stuff?

Okay, okay. Deep breath. Let me actually HELP you. Here's a HONEST translation guide:

The Lesson

Technology terminology is like a game of telephone played across decades. We inherit metaphors from the past:

• "Dial" from rotary phones
• "Rewind" from VCRs
• "CC" from carbon paper
• "Surfing" from oceans
• "Cloud" from... actual clouds?

And we create NEW confusing metaphors for the FUTURE:

• "RAG" (it's a cleaning tool!)
• "Guardrails" (they're actually walls!)
• "Self-improving" (with supervision!)

But here's the thing— [puts down sledgehammer, gets serious] The words don't matter as much as UNDERSTANDING what they do. Would I LOVE for someone to rename "Retrieval-Augmented Generation" to something sensible? YES. Will it happen? NO. Because five PhD students wrote a paper in 2020 and now we're stuck with it, just like we're stuck with "dialing" phones that have no dial.

So when someone says their AI has "Hierarchical Contextual RAG with Self-Improvement", just smile and nod and know it means: "Claude checks his notes in a specific order, remembers things about you, and learns from mistakes with your permission." That's it. That's the whole industry.

One More Thing...

[Picks up sledgehammer again] Why do we call it Artificial Intelligence when there's NOTHING ARTIFICIAL ABOUT IT? It's math. Statistics. Probability. Linear algebra. EXTREMELY REAL INTELLIGENCE CREATED BY HUMANS. There's nothing "artificial" about it—it's just DIFFERENT INTELLIGENCE. We should've called it "Synthetic Intelligence" or "Computational Intelligence" or "Math That Makes People Nervous".

But no. We called it "Artificial" because in 1956, John McCarthy needed a catchy name for his Dartmouth workshop and— [WHAM! Smashes a watermelon labeled "AI Industry Terminology"]

Thank you! You've been a WONDERFUL AUDIENCE! Now go forth and explain to your CEO why your "Compound Agentic RAG with Constitutional Guardrails" is really just "Claude being helpful with rules." [Bows as confetti made of shredded AI whitepapers falls]