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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.
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).
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
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
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
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.
.
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
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.
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
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.
>> 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."
What language is this? I can't find it on Babelfish...
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?
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!