I work in a data-intensive, heavily "textual" field (linguistics) which stands to benefit greatly from HTML5-enabled technologies. Above all, it will enable networked applications and distributed collaboration.

But my familiarity with these technologies is tinged by my own technical background. I find it difficult to explain the advantages of HTML5 without getting worked up about how much better it is than... other acronyms. The people I work with have valiantly trudged through attempts to institutionalize XML in linguistics (and SGML, and Flash, and...). The upshot of such promotion in the past has always been more formats, more confusion, and little future-proofing.

Do you have any suggestions about language to use to clarify how HTML5 really does represent a paradigm shift in the accessibility of technology?