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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.
j00 d0n7 u|\|d3r574|\|d m3 1337 5p34|????
... I do love the jargon of tech.
But seriously, back when I was on phone tech support, half of the battle was describing things without using tech jargon. The other half of the battle was having patience. Thank goodness I am not doing that any more
KARMA TAG! You're it.
In other news:
:P
Terms such as 'baffled', 'flummoxed', and 'jargon' consfuse the general public.
Techs are confused by general public's Lingo.
Sorry, if you're going to write a story about people being confused by big words, please don't use big words to describe how people don't understand big words. Your target audience is then people who can't understand big words. Don't you know we have to dumb down everything for the uneducated people coming out of our schools?
Oh, wait, where is that contradicting report that says the people coming out of our schools are more tech savvy than ever. But they aren't getting educated gaddammmmit.
On a side note, techs don't understand techno-babble either:
"The jig is up!"
no...
"The *gig* is up."
"1.21 Jiggawatts???"
no...
"1.21 Gigawatts????"
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?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Just tell them to go here: The Jargon File.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I never thought about it, but we must sound really funny to non-technically inclined people. "Yea, I picked up the Athlon 1800 XP, you know the one point five three three gig, and the dude was selling pc2100 for like 50 a stick of 512 so I figured what the hell, cause Galaxies was running choppy with my old 133 stuff and the 64 meg GeForce two I had."
That must sound as bad as Star Trek dialogue to most people.
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
Carpe Diem
Put it into terms that they can understand.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Name any field (Computers, Engineering, Finance, Medicine, Skateboarding) and if you are not involved, you will get blown away by terminology.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
It's very analogous to the introduction of the vernacular Mass. When Masses were said in Latin, with the priest facing away from the people, it was a much more mysterious, deep experience. Now that English is used for Mass, the people, without the benefit of years in a seminary, have all become amatuer theologians, thinking that birth control, homosexuality and ecumenalism are all okay, instead of being the one way tickets to eternan Damnation that the Holy See has repeatedly declared them to be.
So, I think we need more computer jargon, computer cases only openable by licensed tech, and a return to Latin Mass.
A. Rightmann
Just tell them to go here: The Jargon File.
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.
All the best,
--Bob
"Memory" means how big the hard drive is.
He calls floppies "tapes".
To him the monitor is the computer.
He calls the tower the hard drive.
And he claims that I'm confusing.
Best Windows Freeware
I pointed out on the .NET thread that our company, prior to my arrivial here, paid waaay too much for a website recently because of a misunderstanding in terminology.
One of the owners wanted the website to have a domain name that ended in ".net" because he felt that ".com" was associated with the US, and he didn't want to be associated with them (this company is an offshore company).
That in itself is kind of funny, but then when the company he hired to do the programming was asking him what type of server he wanted it on and what language. He had no clue, but told them that he wanted the ".net" on it.
They thought he wanted ".NET" and started it up.
At some point the misunderstanding was seen on their side, but they just ran with it, seeing that he was pretty clueless and then overbilled us.
Fantastic.
He isn't totally clueless, he does know a tiny little bit - but that makes it worse.
He just throws around buzzwords and it is a bit embarrassing/hilarious.
His current thing is that he wants a PDA that plays MP3s, and that has a phone jack directly into it that will let him dial-up and check his e-mail, but also record conversations, but it can't be a Handspring product "because those are crap, and did you see that Palm is buying them out" as he told me.
He was asking me the other day which he should try to get, "64K or 128K" in his MP3 player. I acted like he wrote "M" for megs and left it at that.
He makes my days much longer than they need to be - otherwise, I would be doing more programming and less trying to get crap done for him.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
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.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
When my old manager used to talk about "leveraging the synergies inherit in a business relationship", all i ever heard was "blah blah blah more work for you blah blah blah."
... that he think "blah blah blah boy that sounds expensive blah blah blah."
It's only fair that when I talk about SMP architectures, S-ATA, Terabytes, 64-bit, distributed model computing, TCP, UDP, server farms, load balancers, and quad-port ethernet adapters
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
Bluetooth, MP3, RAM, cache, FIFO .. they mean very specific things, and are well suited for having their own names.
Now, if you want a thrill ride of superfluous jargon, take a gander at the business "self help" section of your local book store.
Or google for something called "Six Sigma."
Business jargoneers have a nasty tendency to rename common ideas, wrap them in market speak to create buzzwords, and resell them to the helpless souls who seem to collect in middle managment.
In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial, psychological and sentimental observation. Beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your extemporaneous decantations, unpremeditated explanations have voracious veracity without any rodomontade and thrasonical bombard. Sedulously, avoid all poly-syllabic profundity, pussilanimous vacuity, pestiferous profanity and similar transgressions.
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.
.
Could you dumb it down a little. I just don't understand all this technical jargon.
You're standing with a group of other people, discussing Company X's latest product. One of the people talking throws out an acronym that you've never heard before. You have absolutely no idea what this acronym may mean, as it was mentioned while the person was discussing a framework/language/methodology/technology that you've never heard of before.
Do you:
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? Isn't that part of being a geek?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
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!")
Why are the customer support representatives at gateway and dell laughing so loudly?
Little Brother, watching the watchers
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.
"Only slightly more than half correctly identified the definition of megahertz - a measurement of how many times a part of the processor, called the clock, ticks every millionth of a second." Megahertz doesn't only apply to microprocessor control clocks, it merely means 1 million cycles per second. This could be used to describe atoms, radio, or anything else that cycles really quickly.
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.
He said, "You'll be able to tell your grandchildren that you helped assemble the first NT supercomputer," and I cringed.
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
XP : full form eXPee - fermented urine; sewage. .Net : Used to catch .Fish; also undefined, nebulous technology.
NT : Not Trustworthy - for MS, that is.
MicroSoft: A microscopic, kind-hearted organisation.
DRM: Digital Restrictions Managaement
TCPA: Treacherous Computing Platform Alliance
SCO : short for SCOurge; root of all evil.
XML : eXtremely Munged Language.
GNU : Great New Unix
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I think that the problem is an interesting reflection on the state of technology, and "technologists" themselves. For example, the test includes Megahertz, megapixel, download, web browser and Bluetooth--all good examples (IMO) of naming. "Bluetooth" may be debatable, but it's a distinct name for a distinct technology, and people who use technology should be aware of its capabilities. "Web browser" is another good name; unfortunately, Hollywood's and tech-illiterate journalists' insistence on "surfing the 'net" means that a good name is unknown by the public.
On the dark side of the naming spectrum, the tech industry has given us some gems such as SMS, DVR, MP3 and dot pitch (all from the quiz). SMS and DVR are good examples of trying to pick a generic name that didn't step on any copyright holders' toes, but didn't adequately describe the product either. But perhaps the public is too picky. They learned about VHS, so why can't they learn about DVR.
Dot pitch is a terrible misnomer but its roots are firmly entrenched in the display industry. Perhaps a better term would be "pixel density" or "image clarity," but then it's hard to associate a name like that with a value that gets better as it gets lower.
MP3 is understandable: no one is going to get a friendly, trademarkable name from a group of geeks writing cutting-edge software. But the trademark issue itself it one of the culprits. How many nice names could we have for computer components if the most descriptive words weren't already trademarked?
And finally, it's easy to point out to Houston that we have a problem. It's harder to realize what the problem's origins were and to appreciate the evolution of the computer industry in just fifty years. And it's most difficult to propose a workable solution and carry it through.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
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.
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...
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
>> 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.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
12:00
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
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.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
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.
For Bonjela, I think, although as always, I had the TV muted to cut out the worst of the psychotronic radiation. Anyway, the theme of the ad appeared to be that Bonjela can be used to cure mouth ulcers, and that it does so by by killing the tiny spikey demon person that lives inside them and causes you pain.
So we've known about bacteria since the seventeenth century, but we still believe - in a very real and fiduciarily binding sense - that Joe Lowest Common Denominator is more comfortable believing that mouth pain is caused by little demons. Specifically little spiney ones who dropped out of spiny demon mime school.
And you wonder why AMD gave up on trying to explain why MHz don't matter? I'm surprised they don't market their chips based on multiples of Imp Power.
Buy The New Efreet Chip! Now With the Power of Ten Genies, All Doing Your Bidding!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What language is this? I can't find it on Babelfish...
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!'
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Remember to tell the nontechie to reverse the polarity, it always works in Star Trek...
"Oh, I see, your P4 chipset's not going to work with this PC133. We're going to have to get you some DDR, which will have the benefit of detecting tachyons and reversing the starboard shield antimatter polarity nutation."
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I still haven't exactly figured out what .net really is.
My rights don't need management.
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.
You know what?
that so many people are so ignorant.
I went to repair a PC once at a church about 18 years ago. The lady that used the computer to type letters for the pastor was bumfuzzled because "my TV won't give me a picture after I turned the brain on!"
She called the monitor the "TV" and the CPU was the "brain". It was an old IBM XT.
Turns out that she had turned the brightness down on the monitor because this was *way* before the days (IBM DOS 2.10) of screensavers.
My dad still can't grasp the difference between RAM and hard disk storage after 10 years of me trying to explain it to him.
MOST people call the CASE (the cabinet) the "hard drive"
They know mouse, monitor, keyboard, CD. That's about it.
I find it easier to explain the problem of filling the hard disk up like this.
Your hard drive is like your refridgerator. You can only put so much beer in it before it gets to full to close the door. Once it gets filled up you have to take some beer (files) out to put more in.
It's sad that most people can tell you how many times some football player farted in 1996 or the names of all the movies that some little twit starred in or name all the Brittney Spears songs but they can't put oil in a car or lawn mower, don't know the difference between the CPU and the hard drive, etc...
If it doesn't involve sports, alcohol, or tv/movie stars they are baffled.
I'm afraid there is little hope for mankind, ignorance truly is bliss...
In other news, a poll shows fewer than 5% of the public knows what "Dual Overhead Cam" means. Or could correctly define horsepower other than "what engines are measured in." Neither could they tell you what fuel injection was, what a transmission did or where it was situated in their car.
This news stunned advertisers that have been using these terms to sell cars for the past hundred years. Ford motor company has recently launched a campaign to educate the public as a result of these figures. Experts remain skeptical about the effectiveness of such a campaign, citing the fact that this is 100 year old technology, and saying "if the public doesn't get it now, they never will."
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
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.
You're absolutely right. Instead of saying "megahertz," we should say "three billion individual operations every second." Instead of "MP3 file," we should say "pirated Metallica songs." Instead of "Bluetooth," we should say "magic." Finally, "PVR" should be replaced "illegal content theft enabler."
:: end sarcasm ::
Wow, I'm understanding this technology...er, I mean, "nifty stuff I can spend money on"... already.
Beneath a certain critical threshold, I have to stop blaming the experts, and start blaming the masses who refuse to make any effort to educate themselves about the devices.
As far as the medical profession goes, sure there are many doctors who think that using thick jargon makes them sound smart--and therefore trustworthy. It's a bad strategy. But if someone doesn't know what basic medical terms like "pancreas," "antibody," "virus," and "cell" mean, there's not a whole lot a doctor can do to communicate with them. At that point, it's the patient who is putting his/her own life at risk.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
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.
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.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.