In The Wild

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What Does In The Wild Mean?

The phrase “in the wild” is used in IT to refer to technology that has passed through a development environment, and has become a publicly used tool. Another way to talk about “in the wild” is in reference to technologies that are “post-release,” for example, software products that have already been released to the public.

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Techopedia Explains In The Wild

Part of the use of the slang term “in the wild,” which was popularized by the HBO TV series “Silicon Valley,” relies upon an analogy to the natural world. In nature, people look for wildlife and plants in the wild, where they are beyond any human monitoring or supervision. In technology, people talk about technologies being in the wild when they are no longer under the control of their makers. Software or other products that are in the wild are no longer in a development or production environment – and so tech workers are less able to control how they are perceived and used by ever-larger sets of users. Even in intermediate stages such as beta, software is more observable, and it is easier to make changes. After it is finally released, there is a limit to what its original makers can do to control its use.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

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.