Plug and Pray

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What Does Plug and Pray Mean?

Plug and pray refers to user skepticism about the functionality of a new technology or device. The term is a variation on the term “plug and play,” which is used to promote wireless or other devices that are supposed to be easy to install in a larger IT setup. By contrast, the term plug and pray indicates that the user doesn’t really know if the technology will work; he or she will simply plug in the hardware and hope for the best.

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Techopedia Explains Plug and Pray

Different kinds of operating systems and software have been described as being plug and pray by those who doubted that the products would work the way they were supposed to. The same holds true for wireless mice or other peripherals. With limited electronic drivers and software components, these devices might be simple to install, but may not work as they were intended to.

“Plug and Pray” is also the title of a film released in 2010 that featured prominent research scientist Ray Kurzweil and former MIT faculty Joseph Weizenbaum. The film talks about the potential of artificial intelligence and some concerns about whether progress might cause its own challenges for the human world in the future.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.