Public Confused by Tech Lingo

the_helper_monkey writes "The BBC has an article about how tech jargon confuses the public. It's based on a survey done by AMD asking the definitions of words such as megahertz, MP3, and Bluetooth. " I was recently reminded of how big a deal this is while trying to help my tech novice brother select a computer. If you don't know what a gigabyte is, it's hard to know how large of a hard drive you need.

Comments

It will sort itself out

[KDan]

Through basic generational education...

Maybe some of the currently active generations don't know what a byte or a megahertz is, but more of each successive generation does know. When, as is likely, computer education will be a solid subject part of the primary school curriculum, this problem will vanish on its own.

Daniel

Re:It will sort itself out

[Strandman]

I don't quite agree with you there. Even though computers have been around for a while for young people to learn them, I continue to see people my age (around 20) that don't bother learning what all the things in a computer are. One must remember that for most users; the most important thing is not how it works, but that it works.
Just like when you go to your doctor and get some pills for something, even though there are those who really check up why their medicine works; the wast majority just swallows them and wait for them to work as their doctor said it would.

And the schools will find it more efficent if they just learn the pupils/students how the tool on the computer work, and not that the tool works because of computer language i.e.

Re:It will sort itself out

[LoudMusic]

What scares me, though, is that letting terms get defined and propagated by the general uneducated public tends to lead more toward inaccurate explanation of terms. Tell me again, what is 'memory' in a computer? I keep hearing "I have 3 gigs of memory available but it won't let me run Photoshop" - people need true education of terms, or someone to hold their hand through it all.

Automobiles for example - people have no idea what's going on under the hood. They press the accelerator and it goes. Fill it with gas and it keeps going. If ever it stops going, take it to the man who fixes it.

They either have to have formal education or be left completely in the dark. I think this applies to most subjects / areas of study, not just computers.

Name a field, and someone will confuse you

[msheppard]

Name any field (Computers, Engineering, Finance, Medicine, Skateboarding) and if you are not involved, you will get blown away by terminology.

M@

Re:Name a field, and someone will confuse you

[Transient0]

Absolutely. I don't see why it's news that people don't understand tech terms. If you are trying to get involved in computers and technology, you will pick up the jargon slowly, same as the rest of us.

The only time when it really matters that the public don't understand the jargon is when they are trying to buy a computer. And even still, the same basic thing applies across almost every big ticket consumer purchase. You need a real estate agent to tell you how much a house is worth because you can't figure it out yourself. And if you go try to buy a mountain bike without knowing anything about them, someone might just be able to convice you that the $300 department store bike with dual suspension is a really good buy.

If I was buying a car, I would ask someone who knew cars to help me pick a good one. Likewise, if you don't know anything about computers, ask a friend who does. I have helped many of my friends not get ripped off in the computer purchase decision (so long as they understand that helping them pick a box does not mean they are entitled to lifetime free tech support). If Joe Sixpack is too proud to ask his nephew to help him buy a computer, it's his own damn fault when he pays three grand for a Hewlett Packard that has been out of date for six months.

Unfortunatley

[Gortbusters.org]

Tons of stuff confuses the public, and if organizations like the RIAA can control the definition of terms (MP3 = piracy), than they could help disuade people from pirating (or sharing if that's your angle) music.

I don't buy it

[Bob Abooey]

The problem here is that the general public shouldn't even be concerned with the tech lingo. That's the job of professionals, not lay people. For instance I don't understand a thing about certain cooking terms, like basting or searing, but that's okay because I'm not a chef, so it doesn't affect me.

The truth is probably that the blame for this is squarely on the head of Microsoft for trying to make the PC ubiquitous, like a toaster, when it's really an extremely complicated technology which the common man should not even try to understand, let alone use to it's full potential. But now that the Genie is out of the bottle, so to speak, it's too late to shove her back in and we (the professional IT community) are left to deal with the aftermath of Microsoft's behaviour.

They (MS) got rich by marketing stuff to people with no business using it and we get the shaft.

Re:I don't buy it

[sql*kitten]

The truth is probably that the blame for this is squarely on the head of Microsoft for trying to make the PC ubiquitous, like a toaster, when it's really an extremely complicated technology which the common man should not even try to understand, let alone use to it's full potential.

There were probably people like you saying the same thing about the toaster when it was first invented. And the car, noooo, what could the general public want with cars? Or phones? Or televisions?

Technology isn't just for the "high priests". It's a product, plain and simple. Self-proclaimed "geeks" need to get off their high horses. You think you could afford that fancy computer if it wasn't a mass-market commodity?

Ultimately, it's about power. Microsoft's only crime was that it brought computing to the "common man", bypassing the high priests of tech. Those people hate MS for undermining them. They'd like nothing more than for the "common man" to worship them. Instead, the average employee just wonders where the geek who's supposed to be replacing the printer cartridge is.

Re:I don't buy it

[poot_rootbeer]

Microsoft's only crime was that it brought computing to the "common man", bypassing the high priests of tech.

That, and the whole "repeated violations of antitrust law" thing...

Besides which, if anyone deserves credit for bringing computing to the common man, it's Messrs. Jobs and Wozniak.

dumb down==remove accurate info

[Anonymous Coward]

look at laptop adverts. I want a 1600x1200 screen, now now many pixels is SVGA, XGA, SXGA,WXGA SWXGA? 1.2 MegaPixels? just tell me what the frigging resolution is!!!

Re:So what?

[jandrese]

I don't know about your local library, but mine is not likely to have any books talking about "gigabytes". More likely they will admonish the user to save up that $5000 for the 386 instead of going for the 286 so they can get the real mode support.

On the other hand, a quick search online will quickly clear up a lot of confusion these people have, unless they get sidetracked by porn and gambling.

Re:In other news

[gowen]

if you're going to write a story about people being confused by big words, please don't use big words

This isn't about big words, its about Jargon. Jargon is specific to an area (in this case "tech"). You're a (presumably) educated american, but if I were to start talking to you about "40/20s", "sets of six" and "dummy halves", you'd almost certainly be mystified.

Not because its complex, but because its jargon from a field in which you're not very proficient (unless, of course, you're America's only Rugby League fan...)

Another brilliant observation!

[ACK!!]

Next we will find that most people do not understand history or how their political system is really run!

WTF?

I had the hardest time trying to explain the difference between memory as in RAM versus disk space to my mom when she looked for a computer.

Then there are all these people that want computers to be as easy to understand and use as a toaster or something. They completely forget the vast numbers of machines and ledgers that the computer in the office for example replaces.

How the hell is something that acts likes a typewriter, a ledger, interoffice communication device and research library (google and the 'Net) supposed to be as easy to use as a single use appliance? Answer it is never going to be that easy. That is not to say that things cannot get a hell of a lot better.

The tech jargon is out there for the geeks among us fixated on the system stats. The regular user sees bigger numbers and ends up buying what all his friends have anyway. Looked deep into sports car numbers lately? Half of that crap is meaningless to me torque to dumbnut ratios for sports suspension and makes it more responsive but has the downside of... You get the picture.

Wow jargon is confusing. I needed a study to tell me this?

I see it all the time

[mortonda]

In an ISP and computer repair business, you see this all the time.

"Please bring your computer in so we can look at it."
"The whole thing?"
"No, just the main tower."
"Oh, you mean the hard drive?"
....

Sometimes I can understand that not everyone is this interested in computers, and wouldn't know all th terms.

OTOH, I'm not a bit interested in cars, but I know what an alternator is.

Jargon is only half the battle

[UnknowingFool]

Tech speak is confusing in it has its own vocabulary, but even if people could understand the vocabulary, there is still the daunting task of understanding the technology. For example, somebody might know that a megahertz is used to determine processor clock speed, but they might not understand that clock speed is not really a good measure of computing power even for the same company. A Pentium 4 1.3GHz will outperform a Celeron 1.3 GHz.

I see this all the time

[GlassUser]

I'm involved in teaching people who have little experience with computers and networks how to use them. They don't know a lot of the terminology. The problem is, they don't care to know it. They, like many in management, want to throw money at a problem and hope it goes away. The result that I see is that this gets them a lot of incompatible proprietary "solutions" that don't do what they want, though they're out a lot of money for it.

I don't know what the solution is. They refuse education, instead preferring someone simply telling them something will work and being frustrated later.

Surprised? Problem?

[sourcehunter]

First, does this REALLY come as a surprise to anyone?

And is this really a problem? I know folks who are just now getting a cell phone - and they are 26-27 years old. I don't personally see how they ever lived without one, but I rely on mine for business, and I'm ususally so busy it is the ONLY way to find me. Same with a computer. I NEED to know what GHz, MHz, Bluetooth, WIFI, etc, etc etc is. I WORK in the industry. Does the average joe REALLY need a clue or even need most of this technology in their lives? Does it really even make their lives "easier?" You know what "they" say - "ignorance is bliss."

important

[Boromir son of Faram]

It's about time people started to acknowledge this issue. While all fields (medicine, physics, philosophy...) have their own specialized jargons, as technology becomes more and more a part of every normal person's life, techspeak is going to prove a significant impediment to widespread computer literacy.

A big part of the problem is that words in computer lingo often refer to lower level concepts that normal users don't (and shouldn't have to) know about or understand. It should be possible to discuss the size of a file or disk without understanding what bits and bytes are, and to be able to discuss relative speeds of computers without understanding the role of a clock signal in a CPU (or even what "CPU" stands for).

An effort should be made to replace these confusing terms with familiar ones that normal people can easily understand through analogy. For example, why not refer to memory "sizes" using mass units? A gram could be defined as equal to a megabyte, making people much less likely to answer the question "how fast is your computer?" with "20 gigabytes," since they will intuitively understand that "20 kilos" cannot be a measurement of speed. Likewise, processor speed could be measured in miles per hour, bandwidth in kilograms per second, &c..

A side benefit is that this would allow Europeans and Americans to use their traditional units, which are easily converted between.

Listen

[jdavidb]

If you don't know what a gigabyte is, it's hard to know how large of a hard drive you need.

And if you never listen to what you're told or bother to think about it, it's hard to know what a gigabyte is. I know there's plenty of people who haven't heard, but I just know a lot of people who like to revel in their ignorance. When someone explains something, they grin and say, "Well, that's just too complicated for me." Then they want someone else to work it out for them.

In a land where everyone's proud of not being able to set their VCR clocks (in other words, proud of being too lazy to read simple instructions, or too scatterbrained to follow simple instructions), shouldn't warning bells go off whenever we elect such self-admitted technophobes to Congress and hear them assert, "We've got to get tough on computer crime!"?

Well of course...

[epiphani]

Of course the general public is not going to understand terms like MegaHertz and Gigabytes. Especially when the very article saying they dont describes MegaHertz as a measurement of how many times a part of the processor, called the clock, ticks every millionth of a second.

Hell, even I wouldnt have defined megahertz that way. If you try and get the general public to understand computers literally, good luck. You need to simply educate them relationally. Tell them that the higher the number of MegaHertz, the more responcive the computer will be - it will act faster. If you're feeling brave, tell the its a measure of how many calculations the computer can do in a certain time period. Even that much might confuse them.

You cant teach people literals when it comes to computers. The average person doesnt need to know, nor care to know that USB is the Universal Serial Bus, which supports up to 128 devices with a maximum cable length of 5 meters. They just need to know that USB is a different way to plug things into your computer.

What does the hacker jargon file have to do with

[jeroenb]

anything? It's not like Bluetooth is explained in it.

Re:In other news

[mr.henry]

So exactly how do we all keep screwing up by saying "Gig" instead of "Jig" when we probably heard it right most of our lives?

This is an interesting piece of computer related pronunication trivia. The word 'gigabyte' (think 'gigantic') is apparently correctly pronounced with the 'j' sound. I've never, ever heard anybody actually say 'jiggabyte' though..

Why Should Tech Be Different?

[CrankyFool]

Of course the public is confused by tech-specific lingo. It's for the same reason I get confused if I try to figure out where the Axle Seal is on my Miata, or what the hell SEC rule 17 CFR Part 270 means. Every major industry has its own lingo that has developed to make intra-industry communication as clear and precise as possible. They're labels, and we strive to make them as specialized as possible.

The problem comes when Tech companies (e.g. IBM) attempt to use these labels to communicate with non-industry people. That we have these labels is not a problem (it is, in fact, a good thing). That we persist in using them with 'outsiders' is.
In the end, it may be better to tell someone they can put 1000 hours of music on an iPod (which Apple has done) than "5 Gb of MP3s encoded at 128kbit." It sure is less precise -- what happens if you use 196kbit? Does it support Ogg? But hey, the vast majority of people who Apple is targeting to purchase iPods not only don't care, they wouldn't understand these differences.

I'm not arguing for a dumbing down of all tech communications -- when I buy a RAID card, I want to know what RAID levels it can support -- but some products are naturally designed for outsiders and some are naturally designed for insiders. When in doubt, include both types of lingo (how would that work? I have no clue -- "3.2Ghz CPU with an 800 MHz FSB. / This processor is wicked fast and needs a really modern motherboard -- ask your kid for help!")

Good, Better, Best

[ToadMan8]

I think the best attempt at making this a null issue has been the "Good, Better, Best" campaign of companies like Monster Cable (makes uber cabling for upper consumer level to oxygen free braided ultra pure copper speaker wire for audiophiles)... They rate their own products in a tiered system. Some stores (Circuit city, for example) does this between brands in store as well.

The public will never sit down to learn all of the jargon of the year when it comes to technology no matter it's importance to purchase decisions. Like people who don't have a workable concept of what exactally a horsepower is and how many they need (hey, one horse can carry a person right? so if my car holds 5 people and some luggage 6 HP should do it ;)) uninformed consumers come to those called expert consumers in the marketing world. Their friend the mechanic or the car buff (reads all the mags, knows their shit), or us, the slashdot readers and techies for their computer purchase needs.

All in all, I don't think people not knowing anything about the technical aspects of what they are purchasing keeps them from doing so. I would chalk it up to the slow economy right now. Companies need to improve the purchase process and not shy away from technologicaly advanced language.

Non-News for Nerds. Stuff that don't matter.

[TopShelf]

Wow, I didn't think we could get a less insightful article than the "Gamers aren't (always) Geeks", and then this comes along. Everyday people confused by computer terminology? Shocking!

Think of other consumer goods, however, and you'll see the same thing. Can most people differentiate between the various input/output and resolution options available on modern TV's? Do they have any idea what a VTEC engine is on their new Honda? I didn't think so...

Re:And the thing about the "ANY" key ?

[ComaVN]

Asking people to press any key is nearly always wrong: try pressing the CTRL key or some other metakey, it usually won't do anything. So, asking them to press enter IS more accurate.

In other news....

[Lxy]

English is found to be confusing among non-english speakers.

Re:Sometimes, tech jargon has a purpose

[dreadnougat]

So you think that the general public should be kept in the dark, respecting things that they can't understand and bowing to those who can?

Great idea...

(where did that Catholic idea that birth control is evil come from anyway?)

So what?

[JCMay]

What's the big deal, anyway? Every field of endevor has its own terms that are used (almost) exclusively within that realm. The automotive industry has its own language. Aviation has a language. Farming has a language. Textiles has a language.

I didn't know what calender and anvil rolls were until I worked at Kimberly-Clark. I couldn't have told you the difference between SBL and SMS materials. Didn't know what a forming wire was, or what a motor drive was used for.

Before I learned to fly I didn't know the difference between a Class-B or Class-C airspace, but I did know that "stalling" had nothing to do with the propulsion units :) Ask the guy on the street what a "pitot tube" is, and why is it important (even better, ask him to spell it!).

Working as a microwave circuit designer, I get to deal with another completely different set of words that nobody outside the field understands.

What it all comes down to is that since the Renniassance, it has become impossible for somebody to know everything that is knowable. People don't (can't!) put in the time and effort required to be well-versed in every aspect of modern existance.

Most people, when faced with a household problem or emergency, call an expert: a plumber, a roofer, an exterminator, an electrician or perhaps a carpenter. Each field of expertise has its own phraseology that compactly convey the thoughts of the speaker. Yes, it becomes cryptic to the uninitiated, but over the centuries people have decided that the expressive power of obscure words is better than the alternative: a torrent of verbal effluent that takes a day to pronounce and still doesn't quite capture what the speaker intended.

It's not just the general public....

[Lord_Slepnir]

This happened to me about two weeks ago with Comcast digital cable

Me: Hi. I just installed OpenBSD on an old box, and I'm having trouble getting it to DHCP for an IP address.
Tech Support: I'm not sure what you mean by DHCP, but we have it set up so that your computer will automatically get an IP address
Me (rolling with it): Ok, but I'm still not getting an IP address
Tech Support: What version of Windows are you running OpenBSD on
Me (rather annoyed): OpenBSD is a form of Unix
Tech Support (sounding annoyed): Fine then sir, what version of Windows are you running unix on?
Me: Can you switch me to someone else?

luckily, the next person was helpful (all we had to do was reset my modem), but it goes to show that there are people in the tech industry that don't know a lot of the jargon outside of Microsoft-speek.

Odd Survey Group

[zealot]

The PDF of the survey can be found here.

From Page 4
"Because of objectives and
subject, paper surveys sent
by mail were used to avoid
built-in sample bias from
internet-based study"

From Page 6
Age mix
- 35% Age 55+
- 20% Age 45 to 54
- 21% Age 35 to 44
- 24% Age 34 and under

Gender blend
- 38% Male, 62% Female

It looks like the ended up with a bias in the sample anyway. 55% over 55 years old, 62% female... I think it was already understood that technology confuses them.

Re:Jargon and the like ...

[geekmetal]

"The technology industry must simplify its vocabulary so that consumers around the world can better understand the benefits technology can bring to their lives," said Patrick Moorhead, chairman of AMD's Global Consumer Advisory Board, which commissioned the study.

A better idea would be to educate those who need to understand the vocabulary wouldn't it?
We need the vocabulary, re-defining it would be painful and take a long time. The practical thing to do here is for the tech people help educate the non-techies (as far as patience can take us).

memory = disk space

[Gunzour]

The number one thing that seems to confuse non-techies is memory versus hard drive space. They are both measured in megabytes/gigabytes, they are both used to store programs and information, and they are both inside the big black/beige box that they seem to think is the "CPU".

I don't know that it's truly necessary to know what every term means. Non-techies may not know the definition of megahertz, but they probably understand that more is better. I don't know how horsepower is measured on my car engine, but I know more horsepower means a more powerful car.

And who cares how many people know what bluetooth means? If it's important to you, you will know what it means and you will look for it. If it's not, you will gloss over it.

I'm just a little concerned that this type of study will lead to the further dumbing-down of marketing material for tech products. Nothing annoys me more than product literature that talks endlessly about reducing costs, enhancing performance, saving money, simplifying your life, etc., without ever telling you what the product actually is.

Public confused by WORDS

[wowbagger]

It has been my experience that the public is confused by words - anything more complicated than "push here" is going to be trouble.

I design fairly complicated equipement to be used by (supposedly) trained radio technicians. I recently sent out a replacement file to a specific customer to see if we had a problem he had reported fixed.

Mind you, this customer was working to integrate our equipment into an automated test station - one would expect this person to have at least a cluon or two.

In the instructions for the replacement file, I stated most clearly:
Step 1: update the unit to the latest firmware.
Step 2: after you have done the update, apply the attached replacement file.

Pretty simple, huh? Guess what: the customer did NOT do the update first, and wedged the equipment.

Now, had this been a true production update, I would have added check code to verify that the patch would not apply unless the firmware version matched, then I would have spent the hours validating that the check code actually would catch version mismatches, then released the patch. During all those hours I would NOT have been getting the other features ready.

But this was one customer, and one that should have been more technically adept than most. So I felt that spending thirty seconds explaining the process would be a better use of my time than spending the hours to make it idiot-proof - after all, I was not dealing with an idiot, was I?

The general public runs at just over the level of a caveman (no offense intended OOG if you are still listening...) - anything more complicated than "push here" will elude them (and given that I have seen footage of bank robbers foiled by a "PULL" rather than "PUSH" door, I have my doubts about that) It would seem the average person's reaction to any printed matter is "WORDS! WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE WORDS! OHH, MY HEAD'S ABOUT TO EXPLODE!"

Granted, much of the terminology used in selling computers to the lay public is too complicated for them to understand, but trust me - trying to dumb it down won't work, unless you can determine how to describe a computer in grunts and pointing.

Industry *Likes* Ignorant Public

[bluesangria]

It's to the advantage of marketers that the public is so ignorant about computers. It makes it easier to sell unrealistic expectations as well as worthless products. It also helps marketers differentiate between otherwise similar products.

I kid you not, a computer store I shop at was selling battery backups for home computers that touted "Internet ready" in a bold red and gold splash on the box. Huh???

I thought it might have meant that the modem line ran through the UPS to catch any surges through the phone line, but it didn't *have* any RJ-11 jacks to accomodate this speculation. I came to the conclusion that it was completely useless marketing spiel designed to play on the "Internet" buzzword.

I strongly believe that computer awareness is the next "literacy" of this millenium - as essential as reading, writing and basic arithmetic. But the only way to accomplish that (on a nationwide level) is to *require* incorporating computer literacy into the curriculum of all schools and make sure all schools have the basic tools to teach it, ie. computers.

(steps of soapbox)

blue

And people wonder why...

[Zuke8675309]

It should be no suprise then that Linux hasn't experienced more widespread adoption. It's full of it's own jargon that is *not* intuitive no matter how often linux advocates claim it is.

Re:Just the public?

[pclminion]

Honestly, are any of us geeks ever willing to admit that we don't inherently recognize and grok every single term that is thrown our way?

I admit it when it happens. I also have the ability to learn pretty much everything relevant about the technology within about 15 minutes (there's this thing called the Internet), so I don't see why it should be embarrassing to admit initial ignorance. I still don't know what the hell SOAP stands for, because I just don't use it. If I had to, I could learn about it in a few minutes. I think most geeks are the same, but many have ego problems that prevent them from admitting ignorance.

At least with my bosses at work, I find that honesty about your knowledge base is always preferrable to spewing BS. You'll get tangled in your own BS pretty quickly.

We don't realise it...

[Jucius Maximus]

...you really can't read slashdot without going blind unless you have very specific sets of knowledge.

When I started reading slashdot some years ago after 'graduating' from C|Net, I had to look quite a few things up before I understood the conversations. People kept talking about something called Mozilla which I eventually realised was a web browser ;-) (This was back in the Milestone 0.7 days.) I eventually realised that an OS and the GUI were separate things and Linux wasn't simply that desktop I saw when I booted Corel Linux one time. And at that point, I could already take a computer apart, put it together again, set up networks and such.

Now here is an exercise for you: Load up the slashdot homepage in another browser tab. Now go over the homepage word by word. Would your mother understand each of these words? Or your boss? What percentage of sentences would your mother not understand?

Sometimes I forget that it takes an immense amount of time and reading each week even for people like you and me to keep up with everything on this front. The general public ... well ... it doesn't have a chance.

Re:We don't realise it...

[questamor]

Or just as useful: pick a site that delves into technical information of a kind you're completely unfamiliar with.

Medical geek stuff fascinates me, and it took quite a bit of time looking around sites with medical info before a lot of it sunk in and I could understand the terminology without relying on little "layman's terms" articles that were my saviour in the early times. Perhaps months of browsing these sites gave me the info and experience I needed.

That's all fine if you're interested in the subject and want to put the time in, but when Consumer Joe goes to buy a PC and is confronted with our kind of jargon, he just doesn't have the time to go remember it all AND research, cos he doesn't give that much of a shit. He wants to email, do some stuff with photos, browse a bit and play some games.

Re:We don't realise it...

[garcia]

my co-workers are confused when I talk about their rights being infringed upon by the government (I have already lost 90% of them). When I mention the Patriot Act I and II, 9% more glaze over. The remaining 1% know what I am talking about but don't care enough to talk about it.

Mention Paradise Hotel and how the John Ravolta look-alike got on last night and I guarantee you can start up a conversation.

Ever read an automobile spec sheet?

[stomv]

If not, go to a website selling a new car. Lots of jibber jabber about power telescoping steering columns, intermitent windshield wipers, ABS, Limited Slip, 5.7 Liter V8, Sequential Fuel Injection, F55 Magnetic Selective Ride Control, Fully independent suspension with transverse springs, front P245/45ZR-17, rear P275/40ZR-18, 18 gallon tank, 6.5 quarts oil, 11.5 quarts antifreeze, 16.1:1 steering ratio, 2.66 turns lock-to-lock, 39.4 foot turning diameter curb-to-curb, 22.6 sq inch gross lining on brakes (front), engine with 5655 cc, 375 pound-feet of torque at 4400 RPM manual, 6000 RPM redline, 10.1:1 compression ratio, a firing order of 1-8-7-2-6-5-4-3, head gasket thickness of 1.33mm, Bore x Stroke = 3.9 x 3.62 in, 19mpg city.

Now, I don't have a clue what some of that stuff means. Other stuff I can understand, but I don't know why or if that particular configuration is any better or worse than another.

When I buy a car, I don't care about most of those specs. I consider overall price (inital cost, financing, maintainance, and operating costs), reliability, functionality, and reputation. I know it's highly unlikely I'll ever do more than change the oil or replace a cheap (and easy to get to) part like an air filter or the power window motor. I won't use MotorHead magazine as a reference to help me buy a car... I'll use something much closer to Consumer Reports.

All of this is A-OK. My ignorance won't prevent me from making a pretty good choice in my purchase of an automobile. Why would it stop others in their purchase of an MP3 player, flat screen monitor, or printer/scanner/fax/copier machine?

Bonus points to whomever can figure out what car I (arbitrarily) chose...

This is a little ridiculous...

[NetCurl]

Asking a bunch of technology-aware, most likely above average on the educational scale, daily-computer using "geeks" why no one understands our jargon, is like the guy who always yells at me for not doing my own taxes. I'm not freaking interested in my own taxes, and it's not worth my personal time, but it's worth about $75 for my accountant-friend to do 'em for me. Why doesn't everyone understand all the physics jargon?!?!? It governs our every movement....

Well, some people are cut out for different things. A fellow graduate student in the English department can talk circles around me about certain authors, but we study different things and we understand each other's spoutings to a very small extent. It's not a crime to not know these things, so quit the "Ignorance won't ever be illegal" garbage. You can't know everything. Some people are cut out of the mold differently.

This conversation would be infinitly more interesting if you brought in a bunch of English scholars to debate all the techno-geek denizens of /.

all profession specific jargon is confusing...

[*weasel]

people are just as confused with -any- profession specific jargon

legal jargon
auto jargon
tech jargon
aerospace jargon
military jargon
photography jargon
math jargon

c'mon people - if you aren't in a particular field, the lingo is alien to you until you've had exposure to it. and if you never hear it used in -context- of course you're going to be lost.

the consumer only ever gets the high level marketing bulletpoint, and we all know how useful that is. so who's surprised by this?

what we have in the tech circle though, is marketing educating the public in a vacuum, as geeks are more reclusive than, say, auto mechanics. so the -only- think people know, is what the marketroids tell them. and as marketroids don't know anything either - it's pure fabrication.

education is difficult and expensive compared to marketing. obviously they're not going to bother with that.

Re:In other news

[Klaruz]

Huh? Rugby jargon isn't something you need to know to function in society. Neither is rock climbing, football, stained glass or shoe repair jargon. You need to know computers though. A better example would have been ABS, V6, Cruise control, etc. Jargon? Yes. Stuff to know it if you're buying a car? Yes. (You need a car in american society unless you're one of a small percentage of people who live in a city with good alternative transit.)

I can't think of any other piece of technology that people refuse to learn. TV, VCR, car, thermostat, playstation, jukebox, microwave, etc. All things people learned how to use. Computers? Nope, sorry.

Re:Just the public?

[Phil Wherry]

I've actually used this with great success as a job interview question. It's enlightening to ask a prospective candidate about their experience with a nonexistent technology; the reaction can tell you quite a lot about the candidate's attitude, willingness to learn, and whether s/he will be straight with you when the correct answer really is "I don't know."

Phil

Re:Is it our fault?

[Talking Goat]

No, it's not, but apparently I am. Sheesh...
From the article's "quiz":

You got 7 right!
Have you thought about entering the competition to find the sexiest geek alive?

If only 3% scored a perfect, I feel so bad for the future of our society that I just might cry. It's not that they don't know the tech jagon, it's that they can't take tests. Here's a real tough one:

What is Bluetooth? A: A new dental technique to tackle cavities B: A short-range communications technology that uses radio waves C: An infamous pirate who terrorised the Caribbean in the 18th Century

Who failed this?!? You're taking a tech jargon quiz! Which one is even remotely tach-related?!

I think I'll take a moment to mourn the republic...

Why Techs Are Dweebs From Another Planet

[reallocate]

>> A better idea would be to educate those who need to understand the vocabulary wouldn't it?


With respect, this is more than just a very bad idea. This is why real people think techs and geeks are arrogant dweebs who live on another planet.

The vocabulary is important to people inside the industry because it (usually) allows them to communicate quickly and precisely about matters that are important to them. These matters are not important to the rest of the world.

The vocabulary is not important to the people who consume what techs and geeks build. They have their own vocabulary. Since almost everyone in the world is neither a tech nor a geek, it might be wise for techs and geeks to start speaking something other than gibberish to the people who ensure their incomes.

For example, I'm sure that an entirely different vocabulary has grown up around automotive engineering during the last century. Do people who buy and drive cars need to learn that vocabulary in order to use an automobile? No. They know what is important to them, and if an auto maker fails to deliver that, regardless of what words are used to name or describe it, they'll sell few cars.

Ditto for tech stuff. People need to know "How many movies will fit on this drive?", not listen impatiently as someone explains what gigabyte means. Or, "If plug this wireless thing into my PC in the den, can I carry my laptop into the backyard and get on the Internet?", rather than listening to someone drone one about protocols. (The almost certain result of that one-sided converstation will be the real person's conclusion that the tech is unwilling to speak in understandable terms. Not unable, but unwilling.)

A much more serious example of a failure to communicate on the part of a specialized minority can be the medical profession. Doctors and caregivers put their patients' lives and health at risk if they don't communicate in a way that the patient understands.

Apple's iPod advertising?

[FortranDragon]

I like how Apple does their iPod advertising. They say how many *songs* you can have on it. That makes it easy for people to understand what the iPod can hold. (Yeah, I know how you sample your music will change that number, but that's irrelevant to my point.) Instead of focusing on the nuts and bolts of the tech, Apple focuses on the end result.

For example, if people want to push Linux onto the consumer desktop then this type of word of mouth advertising will be crucial. Consumers done care which technology is *best* technically (subjective many times), but how it is better for them from a practical standpoint. 'Generally virus proof/free (as in cost)/can install on all of your computers (no activation)/etc.' versus 'can scale up to 8-processors via SMP' or some such.

Yes they do

[brunes69]

Everyone needs to know a minimal set of vocabulary to purchase and oeprate anything. Sure a person does not need to know what horsepower is to drive a car. But do they need to know whata Gigabyte is to operate a computer? The answer is no. Sure they should know what it is if they are BUYING a computer..just as a consumer should know what horsepower is when buying an automobile. The problem isn't that the vocabulary is too difficult, it's that people are too lazy to learn it.

Re:Yes they do

[lightsaber1]

To tie this back to the automobile parallel, I'm sorry, but if you don't know what a "steering wheel," or a "shifter," or a "signal lever," "gas pedal," "brake," or any number of other controls in the car are BY NAME (and how to use them for that matter), you shouldn't be driving a car.

The terms that refer to the user interface are usually very simple, but if not known, can lead to hours of miscommunication and frustration.

The problem is that people these days want to take something and just use it, without any training whatsoever, expecting it to just work and not hurt them. This might be okay for things like radios and simple televisions, but what about a table saw? Cars and computers and just about everything else is more complex than that. If you want to use it, first learn how, don't just get it and whine about it not working for you.

Also, with an automobile, how many people who don't know the more complex terms try to fix their own car? I'd say none (successfully at least), yet these people try to fix their computers with no knowledge of what things are called and they wonder why they get frustrated with instructions or tech support when they screw up.

Have some common sense here. Yes, there needs to be an easier way to communicate ideas in the common language, but don't expect to be able to convert every concept into something the general public can understand...this would be neither possible nor desirable.

Re:Yes they do

[ncc74656]

Fuck off you elitist twat. Almost nobody knows what horsepower is, it's just a number, just like GHz.

That whooshing noise you heard was a clue passing right over your head. "Horsepower? What difference does that make? I think I'll buy this Geo Metro over here instead of that Corvette over there."

While you don't need to know how to rebuild a carburetor or swap out an automatic-transmission valve body, it helps to know what the different controls (steering wheel, pedals, etc.) do and to know some of the basic performance specs of the car you're buying. Likewise, you don't need to know how to string together a DirectShow filter graph in order to make an informed computer purchase, but "speeds and feeds" provide a reasonable metric even for someone with only a passing familiarity with computers.

Re:Yes they do

[PetWolverine]

I disagree. Maybe you have a point with tech support people, but it's not my moral responsibility to help my dad with his computer problems. If he can't remember from one session to the next what a scroll bar is and what a close box is and so on, he can't count on me for support.

Why does my knowledge of computers, knowledge which I have gained through my own effort, for my own benefit, make me responsible for keeping other people informed? I never promised I would, and I'm not getting anything in return. Yet I am expected not only the home network, which I created and should support, but the operating system, applications and hardware, most of which I had little or nothing to do with designing, or in some cases even purchasing.

Re:Jargon and the like ...

[kisrael]

Of course, even if people know the definition of a MHz, they'll still likely to think of it as "how fast your computer runs" in practical terms, which is still problematic.

Actually, before I read the article, I probably couldn't have given a definition of Mhz, and I'm pretty technical. I think of it as basically a form of MIPS (meaningless indicator of processor speed). I'm not a "speed queen", I'm vaguely aware of what's considered "normal" for speed these days, I know Ghz is 1000Mhz, and that it's a useful metric that doesn't always tell the whole story of PC performance... now, why is just thinking of it as "how fast your computer runs" so bad?

Anyway, I think there is a big difference between useful technical terms and jargon and rampant acronym-making and political double speak.

Bull!

[nlinecomputers]

People are just plain lazy. Thank you public education and TV. The adverage person doesn't need a technical understanding of horsepower to know that the higher the horsepower rating the faster the car goes. Most people don't know the math and physics envolved and most don't need to. The same thing applies to tech terms. I find many people that confuse megabyte and megahertz. Most people can tell you the basic difference between a transmition and a engine yet most people can't tell the difference between memory and hard drive space. This ISN'T rocket science it just NEW.

Re:In other news

[radish]

Let's see...

Playstation - switch on, shove disk in, play game.
Thermostat - adjust dial to desired temperature.
Car - common interface taught and tested by law. Big wheel, stick, bunch of pedals. Even so, a lot of people take a long time to learn to drive.
Microwave - Simple timer and "Low/High" button.
Computer - well...let's see.... different O/S (XP/NT/98/OSX/MacOS9/Linux/BSD/...), different apps (MSOffice/Photoshop/StarOffice/IE/Moz/...), disks (floppy/cd/cdr/hdd/dvd), processor (AMD/Intel/IBM/whatever), memory (RAMBUS/ECC/DIMM/SIMM/DDR), monitor (CRT/LCD)...I could go on. Hardly comparable!

My mum's understanding of TV extends to "plug it in, plug the aerial in, grab the remote, press the red button". She can get about as far with a computer (in fact, with the iMac I bought her she's quite proficient at what she needs to do). But does she know what a GB is? Nope. Or would she figure out whether a 2Ghz P4 is faster or slower than a Athlon XP2000? Doubt it (can anyone?) On the other hand would she understand the difference between interlaced and progressive scan, or NICAM and HiFi Stereo, or DTS and DD5.1? Again, probably not.

The problem is that buying/operating a computer requires a lot more knowlege than other things (or rather, we think it does). I don't know a lot about cars, so I rely on reviews and sales people to guide me. We geeks laugh at people who do the same with computers because we know so much more, in fact if someone just walks into a store and buys a PC they'll probably get something perfectly good, if not ideally targetted to their exact personal needs.

Re:Be Judicious

[ToadMan8]

I'd say linguistic concision is the objective. Using massively syllabic words doesn't evidence intelligence in it's own right - the impressive part is the exactitude of those words compared to their sloppy, wordy counterparts.

Take the phrase "linguistic concision" for example. To replace that with a simpler vernacular I'd have to say something to the effect of "being really precise with words" - far less elloquent and efficient.

BUT the biggest problem is that if the speaker's diction is above the level of that of the receiver communication breakdown occurs, not to mention hard feelings between parties. One must consider their audience when speaking. This applies to tech as well - especially, as a parent comment mentioned, in the phone support business (where I've had experience).

Less is not more.

[aussersterne]

People in tech marketing keep telling us that consumers "just want things to work" and don't want to have to be bothered by jargon or technical details when making buying decisions. I think this is a bad idea.

The problem is that once they figure that consumers will buy without specs, manufacturers stop putting them on the box, or making them available on the Web site, and so on. That way they can cut corners or do proprietary things without anyone ever knowing. It soon becomes damn hard to see what standards a particular device supports, and thus what decision to make when buying it.

Think about car buying:

Car salesman: This is our latest! Isn't she beautiful?

Customer: How many horsepower? Displacement? Is it turbocharged?

Car salesman: She's got the most power in her class. Drives really nice.

Customer: Do you have any specs?

Car salesman: It doesn't matter, all power is not created equal. Just test-drive her and you'll realize, she's got the most power in her class.

Customer: Anti-lock breaks? Air bags?

Car salesman: I think so, but it doesn't matter, she handles so well you'll never need them anyway.

Customer: But are they there?

Car salesman: If the Toyota model has them, I'm sure she does as well. We're generally a step ahead of Toyota in these things.

Customer: How many cylinders? Four? Five? Six? Eight?

Car salesman: Um, the engine is perfectly sized for the car's body. And as I said, most power in her class. Don't worry about it, just give it a test drive.

Customer: How about the interior? From here it's hard to tell. Can I feel it?

Car salesman: (opening door) Actually, I think it's leather.

Customer: No, it's obviously not leather, I can tell just by feeling it. What kind of vinyl is it, though?

Car salesman: Well, whatever it is, I'm sure it's the best. She's a beautiful car and anything less just wouldn't suit her. Ready to take a test drive?


I admit that there are one or two car buyers these days who are satisfied with such a conversation, but (at least where I'm from) nearly everyone goes to independent sources of information before buying a car -- auto guides, the World Wide Web, etc. -- to get answers to these questions.

It's all part of being an informed consumer in a world in which business would prefer to screw you hard for all you're worth, given a chance. Naturally most consumers these days aren't comfortable with tech jargon, but in another generation, everyone will be fine with it; it will be a part of life. TV is just getting to that point... the older generation still has no idea about such things, but current adults can hook up coax cable, auto-scan for channels, run picture-in-picture, know what a "projection" TV is versus a tube, know that they want stero rather than mono, and so on.

I would prefer to see laws that require detailed, scientific specs to be printed on boxes and to be available from salesmen and manufacturers upon request. If some people want to ignore them, fine, let them, but at least then there is some measure of protection for people who are willing to try to get a reasonable deal in this world of ours. Why instead are we hell-bent on hiding all relevant information from the consumer, so that companies can sell you a "milk farm" for a few million, then deliver a small aging female goat to your doorstep?

I mean, half of the computer boxes and shop salesmen out there are already useless, providing misinformation to uneducated computer users and no viable information at all information to ededucated ones. Making this problem worse or hiding it altogether beneath a glowing sheen of ignorance may make a few of the more lazy consumers happier, but is that ethically okay if they're getting screwed the entire time by inferior products?

I'm sure some Slashdot braniac will say hey, if the consumer is happy being taken, then let them be taken! Fine. Is it okay to lynch someone and steal their wallet, if I can get them to be in favor of it? I'm sure a few shots of Brandy here and there and I can make quite a few bob...

Commonality was faster than older techs

[NaugaHunter]

The main difference between computer tech talk and other tech talk is that computers became part of the common daily life of people before they became truly commoditized (verbing nouns is always fun). When cars first came out, only hobbyists/rich had them and knowing tech set them apart as a club. Once they became cheap enough to become somewhat common (I'm thinking 50's), only the hobbyists really knew what the details meant, most people knew they sounded good. Nowadays even terms like 'overhead cam' are fading, as the public knows that all things considered, a car is a car. What are obvious it's factors: seating, color, looks, convenience. About the only tech most people would still would care about is mileage.

Relative to that, personal-use computers are a young technology. But their usefulness and relative cheapness have spread them through the masses unlike virtually anything before them.* Thus, they are still growing and changing, and the details matter, but they are being used more and more by people who only care about the overall package. A problem that arises is that manufacturers can't easily advertise their usability features since they come from software, so they advertise the internal details. Not to start a war, but the differences between Apple and other ads reflect this. Apple has moved to trying to advertise what the computer will do for you. Other manufacturers have featured their tech lists. They are starting to switch over, like in the Dell commercials with interns, but instead of saying 'Let's you record CDs!' they still say 'Has 52X CD burner!'. Since the only thing that seperates most computers is the internal technology they won't lose it all, but hopefully they will start leaving out more and more.

I don't think it's a bad thing per se. Yes, repeatedly telling my mother 'You don't have 40 GB of RAM!' gets tiring, but I try to keep in mind that what really matters is what she gets out of it, not what she thinks she knows about how it works.

* One counter example of quick pervasiveness of new technology might be the telephone, or later devices based on it, but these never had a real tech-talk associated with them. Sure, marketers tried to introduce one with cordless phones (900Mhz! 2.4 Ghz! Digital, not cellular!), but most people just want a phone with decent features and decent pricing that works, regardless of how. This is probably true of computers as well; there are just few places that would admit 'Well, yes you can check your email and the web with that model' without adding 'but this one is 1.643 times faster with two times the memory for only $350 more!'

Re:Meaningless

[myz24]

I bet a similar survey asking people what cylinder, piston, carborator, camshaft, calliper, etc. would yield the same results

Not really because nobody sells computers by telling what's inside a CPU. Nobody talks about registers and other crap in a CPU, they just say it has a 2Ghz CPU or about 2000 Mhz and that bigger numbers are better. Same thing in a car, most people want to be sold a car with an 8 cylinder engine because it must be better than a 4 cylinder. Even though that's not always true for CPUs (AMD until recently) and cars (check out the 4 cylinder powered Impreza WRX, it'll spank most stock V8 cars).

The point is, most people don't know anything about computers or cars, they just want to have something better than the next guy (think CDW commercial)

well let's not have any field-specific terms

[nuggetman]

Let's get rid of all confusing field specific terms.

Brake rotor, piston, spark plug, cadalydic converter, distributor cap...

Defendant, prosecution, jury...

Computer terms are used to describe the items. I'm sure this same problem existed when people first started to learn how cars work. They're not confusing terms, they're new terms. You don't learn them, you'll be confused.

Isn't the solution the dreaded "m word"?

[switcha]

Marketing is all about taking things and ideas and making them palatable to the general public. In the computer world, you try to give people catchy handles to reference technologies that are fairly obscure in their technical descriptions.

Firewire -- IEEE-1394
Airport Extreme -- IEEE 802.11g
Bluetooth -- Full duplex radio in the 2.4 GHz spectrum
(add your own)

There's little things in most computers and apps that do a fairly good job of masking the tech behind them. It wasn't long ago that you had to type http:// into a browser window. Now most will assume that and go get the page.

Hardware still has a way to go. RAM, VRAM, and hard drives are all fairly basic things that will frequently flunk the "Mom test". Maybe it's time for some 'unit' of memory and storage than help to explain what these do for the computer in a more colloquial terms.

Re:Tech Geeks don't understand Mgmt Jargon

[brakk]

I hate buzzwords. Using buzzwords is almost as bad as being politically correct. At least tech jargon means something, even if some people don't know what.

Re:Be Judicious

[Idarubicin]

Take the phrase "linguistic concision" for example. To replace that with a simpler vernacular I'd have to say something to the effect of "being really precise with words" - far less elloquent and efficient.

I agree with your point--to a point. The use of "vernacular" is gratuitous; you could have used "phrase" or even "term" to convey the same message. Nevertheless, you are quite right that the real trouble arises when the listener perceives precision as snobbishness.

Describing the irony of making a typo in the word "eloquent" I leave as an exercise for the audience. ;)

Re:Good news for Linux?

[crazyphilman]

It's a deep, cultural problem, which goes far beyond people having trouble with jargon. Here in the US, people are conditioned away from being intelligent, sensitive, and inquisitive. This happens in school, where interesting, inquisitive kids are picked on mercilessly until they withdraw into themselves and become loners, or they suppress their desire to learn and join the herd. Conformity is treated as the highest good, and emphasis is placed on mindless activities and the denial of any deep interests (this began in earnest, I think, as a cold war phenomenon, but it goes back throughout our history). Look at the people who are considered popular or interesting in American culture: movie stars, musicians, athletes, talk show hosts... They are often referred to as geniuses by the members of the media, who I suspect are so stupid themselves that a 300 pound man who makes his living slamming into other 300 pound men actually looks SMART in comparison.

Most people in this country think of reading books as a chore. They think of learning as something they "had to put up with" while they were in school. They're not interested in going to the library, or of picking up a novel, or of spending even five minutes reading a technical manual so they can actually DO something with the flashy PC the UPS guy just delivered. They go to work, they come home, they sit down on the couch with a vast quantity of junk food, and they watch TV, turning their minds off for the four or five hours it takes them to get sleepy. Then, they go to bed, unless it's "sex night" (they say the average couple does it twice or three times a week). On "Sex night" they grind their flabby, sweaty bodies together for five minutes, smoke a cancer-stick, and pass out. And, it's terrible and pathetic -- think of how much MORE they could have done with their lives. Think of how they're allowing themselves to be LIMITED, just letting the system turn them into fat losers. It's fucking tragic.

I'm not saying EVERYONE is like this. College grads are a lot less likely to fall into this trap. Technical types are pretty unlikely to suffer from it; they tend to spend their time doing technical things, studying, and keeping themselves sharp. But, the majority of the people out there are *exactly* like this. And, it's a serious problem.

Anyone who's read the story "Harrison Bergeron" will know where I'm going. Think about this: instead of giving you an electrical jolt every time you have a deep thought, or weighing you down with iron, or constricting you to force everyone to be equally talentless, instead, society just uses peer pressure and distraction. Throughout a child's youth, he's pressured to be mediocre. He's taught to consume third-rate crap and junk food, turn off his mind, and allow himself to be arbitrarily limited. By the time that child is an adult, it is no longer possible for him to turn it around on his own! Because he will simply not have the desire to make an effort. It isn't even necessary to force people to do it -- most do this on their own, freely!

This is our reality. And, the authors of the major works touching this issue, Kurt Vonnegut and Aldous Huxeley specifically, were talking about exactly this.

Those of us who don't fall for it, who one way or another end up becoming techies and intelligent despite society's best efforts, well... If we make it to adulthood without being turned into sheep, society will give us a job and make us useful (if, that is, we're not outsourced and starved out of existence, ha ha).

If you squint your eyes and look at it from the corner of your eye, it almost looks as though society wants to test our resolve. "So you want to be smart, eh? Well, first you have to get through twelve years of bullshit in school, THEN we'll see how you do". Not that many make it. What are there, ten million technical professionals in the entire U.S? Out of 257 million people? That's only 4 percent of the population.

Think about it. Creepy, huh?

Re:Jargon and the like ...

[drinkypoo]

Actually, before I read the article, I probably couldn't have given a definition of Mhz, and I'm pretty technical.

Uh. The two statements above are contradictory. Anyone with a dictionary can tell you that Hz (BTW, that's "MHz", not "Mhz". There's a big difference, just like between "K" (Kelvin) and "k" (Kilo)) is equal to cycles, what cycles are, what Mega means; they can thus figure out that it's a million clock cycles per second. That might not tell them anything, but at least you can figure out what it means.

The problem is that people are stupid, lazy, or both. None of this shit is hard to figure out. Actually there is a third class of people, those who are afraid they will be dehumanized by their contact with computers, so they treat the computer like a screwdriver or a drill or something. The problem with that approach (assuming you're trying to do real work and not just read email, which you could do just fine with a set-top box) is that the computer is vastly more complicated, there are tools within tools and knowing how to use some of them will let you get things done much faster and more efficiently.

I know Ghz is 1000Mhz, and that it's a useful metric that doesn't always tell the whole story of PC performance... now, why is just thinking of it as "how fast your computer runs" so bad?

Sure, it's useful, but it would be better if you knew that it wasn't the whole story. Take a look at cars for a second, I am against automotive metaphor in computing but there is something to be learned here without any metaphorical bullshit. In cars there are a number of statistics which pretty well determine how it will behave, and how it will be to work on. For instance, you can make a pretty good guess at how a car will perform based on horsepower, torque, and weight. If you have some information on the type of suspension and the differentials, then you can make a much better guess. In computers, just knowing the clock rate and the memory speed will let you make a pretty good stab at understanding how fast it will be, but unless you know what kind of CPU is in it, it only tells you so much. When shopping for the best and fastest, for example, you must know that AMD's PR (Performance Rating) scores are pretty right-on until you get up into the fastest Athlon XPs, where they break down.

No matter what your situation, the more you know, the better off you are. It's true that the wrong amount of knowledge may lead you to incorrect conclusions, but avoid jumping to them and use your knowledge to decide what kind of questions to ask. The next issue is finding out WHO to ask questions of; Don't ask salesmen. That's the first step to enlightenment.

Julius Caesar said it best

[rifter]

Avoid an unusual and unfamiliar word just as you would a reef.

It is always best to remember your ABC's as well: Accuracy, Brevity, and Clarity. Part of clarity, as you said, is considering your audience.

Re:Be Judicious

[rifter]

Is anyone else reminded of that stupid architect from Matrix Reloaded? As though using more syllables implies hyper-intelligence.

You are right about this, but essentially a good vocabulary goes a long way. It is a lot like the towel in _The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_To_The_Galaxy, really. If you take time to improve vocabulary, diction, grammar, and spelling, people will generally assume you are otherwise very well educated and intelligent. It is a smart thing to do, anyway, and is certainly educational.

Usually someone speaking or writing Ebonics, "Redneck" or some "gutter slang" will give the impression of someone who does not care to learn anything and may not be all that smart. After all, they did not bother to learn their native tongue, which everyone should have learned before even entering school. It is a prejudice, to be sure, and a common one; it is certainly not a truism (there are highly intelligent people who regularly express themselves in one of the aforementioned modes of communication or something similar).

At any rate, knowing this to be the case, it is nevertheless clear that improvement in this area, being simpler than almost any other, is a cheap way to get ahead. It has certainly worked for a number of currently highly successful people.

which "wireless thing"?

[Anonymous Coward]

People need to know ... "If plug this wireless thing into my PC in the den, can I carry my laptop into the backyard and get on the Internet?"

It depends on whether you're talking about Bluetooth or 802.11. They are both "wireless things" but one of them will almost certainly not allow you to get onto the Internet from your back yard. We need accurate terminology in order to have meaningful discussions about technological products. Dismissing new names for new technology as "jargon" is naive.

Re:Why Techs Are Dweebs From Another Planet

[pla]

With respect, this is more than just a very bad idea. This is why real people think techs and geeks are arrogant dweebs who live on another planet.

And at the same time, the reason we geeks consider the masses as unbelievably stupid sheep.

These words don't have an arbitrary basis (beyond the arguement that all words reflect a set of arbitrary choices several thousand years ago)... Basic engineering terms with SI units to quantify them. Really, only "byte" counts as a truly "unique" word people need to understand. Everything else simply describes, in terms existing quite happily outside computer tech, physical aspects of the component. (Okay, "mouse" seems like a new word (or use thereof), but people don't have much trouble with that one).

While techies can certainly make an effort to explain their use of words that get a blank stare, the mindless masses still deserve much of the scorn we heap upon them. For example, memory vs HDD space - Really NOT a tough distinction, at least at a high-level. One stays around after you shut off the machine. Simple as that. Yet people can't remember even that much. Even worse, now that we tend to measure both in gigabytes (oooh, those nasty SI units Americans in particular seem to hate, as I learned many years ago in a college intro-bio class). Of course, confusing them on the basis of using the same units to measure them strikes me as equally sensible to confusing my penis and my monitor because I could measure both in inches.


Do people who buy and drive cars need to learn that vocabulary in order to use an automobile?

Yes. Try to drive a car without knowing what an "accelerator", "brake", or possibly a "clutch" does? Without knowing how many "gallons" or "liters" of fuel the car holds, and how far I can drive on that? Without knowing what a "defroster" does and the farly standard symbol that will appear on the button for it? Same issue. If people want to use computers, they need to learn the basic parts and the units of measure for those parts.


Ditto for tech stuff. People need to know "How many movies will fit on this drive?", not listen impatiently as someone explains what gigabyte means

Yes, people want answers phrased like that, but simply can't have them without a better understanding of the question. What codec? what bitrate? How long of a movie? Any "quick" answer makes a lot of possibly unsafe assumptions. Similar to your automobile analogy, someone might "know" that 10 gallons of fuel in a typical car should take them (at least) 200 miles over the deathly-hot desert to the next town - Oops, forgot to mention they drive an '82 Dodge Dart, getting 12 miles to the gallon. "They gonna die" for wanting a "simple" answer without any contextual understanding.


These matters are not important to the rest of the world.

No excuse exists for willful ignorance. If a term confuses me, I look it up. If I need to really grasp it, for example to properly use something I spend several hours each day using, I research related conceptual territory until I grasp the ideas behind the word. I don't only do this for computer terms, but for medical terms, automotive terms, knitting terms, audio terms, whatever. "Jargon" only provides an excuse for not knowing a word the first time someone hears it.

THAT makes me a geek, and explains why we deride the sheeple so venemously - Because most people will not even look up a word they don't know, prefering to stay ignorant. Unforgiveable, and those of us who do take the initiative to better ourselves most certainly should not accomodate those too lazy to do likewise. They want to stay ignorant? Fine, they can serve my fries (until we completely automate the fast-food industry) and I'll spare them the jargon.

The world moves on, with us or without us.

Re:Why Techs Are Dweebs From Another Planet

[rleibman]

For example, I'm sure that an entirely different vocabulary has grown up around automotive engineering during the last century. Do people who buy and drive cars need to learn that vocabulary in order to use an automobile? No. They know what is important to them, and if an auto maker fails to deliver that, regardless of what words are used to name or describe it, they'll sell few cars.

I love it when people use the computer/car analogy because it is easy to debunk. It is flawed. Many other computer/X analogies fail on the same logic.

Computers are not cars. Cars are meant to do one thing and do it well: drive you around town. Computers are meant to do many things, balance your checkbook, control missile trajectories, play games, etc.

The reason I bring this up is because in your argument you state that there are two camps (users and techonologists) and that they require different vocabularies. For cars that's well and good, but I'm not sure, given that computers are not cars that the same applies to computers. People need to know a little (and sometimes a lot) more about how computers work than they do about cars.

Every speciality has its own set of jargon

[opusman]

It's not just the tech industry that has jargon. My sister (who wouldn't know a MHz from a Mb) has just finished her PhD thesis. Does anyone know what this means, for example:

Engaging with current debates on national identity, environmentalism, and the legacies of
colonisation, this thesis considers non-indigenous belonging in contemporary Australia
and its discursive representation as insufficient, illegitimate, and in urgent need of
resolution. Apocalyptic overtones adhere to discussions of an unsettled and anxietyridden
non-indigenous culture in which a 'crisis' of belonging for a non-indigenous
majority is seen as an historical inheritance weakening, or indeed dissolving, any kind of
national cohesion.

I think tech jargon is mild compared with this..

Re:Why Techs Are Dweebs From Another Planet

[pla]

Why read more when arrogance is always unjustified?

What an arrogant statement. ;-)

Sorry, I don't mean that as sharply as it sounds. But your insistance that your belief holds true while mine does not... Well, I'd like to know how you consider that not a form of arrogance in itself.

However, I do have a better point to make than a meaningless "gotcha"...


What you term "the masses" (in just a shopworn elitist way of setting yourself apart) is really just a bunch of people just like you.

Truly, I used to believe that myself. I would say to myself, whenever something seemed very "wrong" about another person's (or rather, most people's) behavior, that they thought more-or-less the same way that I do and I only needed to find the motivation for their behavior to make sense.

But at some point, I came to the conclusion that no, "they" do not think like I do. They simply do not think, period. Most people simple lack any curiosity about their world, beyond what gets them fed, sheltered, and laid. Not that I mean that to apply to everyone - I know quite a few people who appear to actually "think", and tend to associate with such people preferentially. But the majority? No. Not by a long shot.

Most people have no sense of wonder at the world (past childhood, when I believe some people could still make it to "conscious being" in later life if we didn't have such an "effective" public school system). They don't look at the sky and wonder why it appears blue. They don't plug something in and wonder why it takes three prongs, when two (or one, actually, assuming an object not completely insulated from its surroundings) would suffice. They don't wonder what a "byte" means in relation to "that new way to distract myself I downloaded off Kazaa". They don't wonder how a shiny 12cm disc translates into the sensory experience of Beethoven's 5th (or even how Beethoven's 5th translates into a sensory experience at all). They don't wonder why ethanol makes you drunk but the very very similar methanol molecule kills you. They don't wonder why chenille yarn feels so soft and why lens paper feels rough. They don't wonder why Advil makes aches and pains go away. They don't wonder. Period.

And THAT I assert as my justification for calling them mindless. Not that they don't contain quite a lot of information, but rather, they don't want to contain any information beyond that necessary to keep breathing. Anything more than that people resent and attack out of fear. No one thanks the geek who builds a solar still to allow a dozen people trapped on a desert island to survive - They consider him a threat, since he knows how to keep them alive and they do not.

Rather than "mindless", I suggest "not quite conscious". The idea that people sleepwalk through their lives. Content to live to work to eat to live to work and so on until death.


And I did believe otherwise, once upon a time. You can only disprove a hypothesis so many times, though, before you need to declare it inductively false. Not arrogance, but a rational progression of ideas.

Public also confused by wine lingo

[dsplat]

Most people couldn't tell you the differences between varieties of wines; even people who can taste the differences without any trouble. That doesn't stop people from buying wine. And it doesn't stop people who've never learned French, but who love wine, from picking up a fair amount of French wine jargon.

One of the reasons for the complaint is that a lot of people want computing appliances. And there are a lot more who don't really, but believe they do. Another reason is that tech, by definition, is rapidly changing. We add new jargon for new things. I have no idea what the latest bus technology for consumer computer products will be called 10 years from now. Nobody has a name for it yet. But I'll need to know that name 10 years from now.

Need to know?

[POds]

Is it really important for the public to know exactly what a Gigabyte is or a MegaByte. Or for that matter GigaHertz or MegaHertz etc...

I think basicly the community should only need to know that when a Byte is at the end of something such as Mega Giga or Kilo that its a term of storge. I feel that they may need to know that Mega is larger than kilo and Giga is larger than kilo etc. I dont think its important to get into the fine detail of stuff, such as what these things are made up of on the board.

Another example, Hertz... when they hear or see that, they know it has something to do with speed. Speed related. And that the bigger the better, normaly.