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

[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.

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: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...)

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.

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.

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

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: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

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.

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.