What democratize really means

Historical grounding

Let’s recall what democracy means:

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dēmos ‘people’ and kratos ‘rule’) is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections. – Wikipedia

Let’s also recall the core meaning of democratization:

Democratization, or democratisation, is the structural government transition from an authoritarian government to a more democratic political regime, including substantive political changes moving in a democratic direction. – Wikipedia

This meaning is weighty and important. Which explains why self-interested people and organizations are trying to appropriate it; they want to steal the positive connotations for their own narrow purposes.

The core meaning of democratization matters. It is worth protecting, if we can.

Usage trend

Here is a screenshot of the Google Trends result for “democratize” as of August 2024:

I added the dotted red line by hand to suggest a linear trend line. Roughly speaking, it looks like 2009 was the year where usage democratize began its steady increase.

Counter example

What follows is not aligned with the true meaning of democratization; it has nothing to do with democratic governance in any shape or form:

The NVIDIA platform continues to deliver even more performance through invention across the entire stack, including new chips and systems. The NVIDIA Blackwell platform, announced at GTC 2024, is set to democratize trillion-parameter AI, with NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 delivering up to 30x faster real-time trillion-parameter inference, and up to 4x faster trillion-parameter training compared to the same number of NVIDIA Hopper GPUs.¹

The ethics of meaning

Yes, I understand that word meanings evolve. This is a descriptive phenomenon. But don’t confuse descriptive with normative claims: just because something tends to happen doesn’t mean it is good nor useful.

The more language is stretched, the more we lose precision of meaning. Do we want self-interested entities to misappropriate our most virtuous and important words? No, we don’t. So what to do?

Ways to push back

Here is a question for you:

There are a range of options. Below I list eight, starting with a option zero, which I don’t recommend. Options 1 through 7 may work in a conversational progression.

0. Say nothing

Miss an opportunity. Sit idly by as important words get diluted.² This is an easy way out.

Some may even claim that saying nothing is the rational strategy. But it becomes harder to make this claim when you actually think about your options and make a plan for next time this happens in a conversation. There are many effective and socially acceptable ways to push back.

1. Be curious

It helps to be curious. Ask what they mean by democratization. This is a good opening strategy, but don’t stop here.

2. Give historical context

Point out the original meaning of democratization: increasing the number of people in the world who have access to free and fair elections.

3. Get real

Ask them if they know the number of people in the world who don’t have access to free and fair elections. You might mention Freedom House’s interactive map.

4. Paraphrase the marketing

You can paraphrase the original claim. For example, if company claims to have democratized such-and-such, you might paraphrase this as:

The company boosted user adoption.

5. Identify the disconnect

Point the difference between “user adoption” and “increasing access to fair elections”.

6. Acknowledge short-term self-interest

Yes, the word democratize sounds nice. It is tempting.

But beware short-term thinking: blurring the word might work for a while. But people won’t be fooled for long; they will see through the corporate-speak.

As such, democratize is not a durable word for corporate strategy nor branding. It may even backfire as eye-rolling increases.a

7. Invite a new direction

You might say:

Given all this, why not course correct? Let’s reserve democratize when we’re talking about promoting democracy.

Endnotes