In popular culture, a zombie is defined to be a person who has died and been reanimated in a manner that typically causes them to lose intelligence and, sometimes, even, sense of self. Sometimes its because a voodoo doctor or other evil personage re-animated them. Other times its because a virus, often created by a mad scientist, had a very adverse effect and created an infection that spread (like wildfire) and create half-living / half-dead creatures that are, for all intents and purposes, zombies.
But that’s not the only definition of a zombie. Another definition of zombie is a person held to resemble the so-called walking dead, included, but not limited to, an automaton. An automaton that is indistinguishable from a person that repeats the same well-defined tactical tasks over and over again, day after day after day.
A person that, with the right sustenance (brains in popular culture, or coffee and painkillers in others), can actually maintain semblance of self and intelligence, even if such semblance of self and intelligence is rarely seen during the day to day performance of their tasks.
A person that, in all likelihood, works in an organizational back-office job in an enterprise using outdated technology and inefficient processes, like your average Procurement organization.
So, when SI is saying that iZombie is a good name for our profession that was supposed to be dead and buried two years ago, but is still going … on auto-pilot. Automatons we are.
iZombie.
Why?