Geekspeak Baffles Web Users

An anonymous reader writes to mention a BBC article on the technology buying public's continued frustration with 'geek speak'. Despite ever-increasing adoption of high tech gadgets in first-world nations, the terms used to describe what these new toys do often elude the people who buy them. From the article: "Acronyms in particular foxed users. 75% of online Britons did not know that VOD stands for video-on-demand, while 68% were unaware that personal video recorders were more commonly referred to as PVRs. Millions of people keep in touch via instant messaging but some 57% of online Brits said they did not know that the acronym for it was IM. 'The technology industry is perhaps the most guilty of all industries when it comes to love of acronyms,' said Mr Burmaster. "

Comments

Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[aoism]

pepople cant memorize computer industry acronyms

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[jacquesm]

IANALA (I am *not* a language analyst) but I'm pretty sure that since as long as language exists those who have the ability to make up new words or to grasp the meaning of a new word without a lot of explanation belonged to the smarter segment of the population. The faster our development becomes the more important these skills are. We've now reached a point in time where it won't be long before the rate of development has become so great that it is possible for two people to no longer be able to communicate with each other even though they share a common language due to this vocabulary development gap.

If you don't believe that try to decipher an SMS message sent by one 13 year old to another :)

And PCMCIA was a pretty good example, but some of the stuff I see here on /. causes me to reach for the nearest search engine to figure out what on earth they mean.

this place could easily be nicknamed buzzword central :)

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

[Fordiman]

I've got no problem with slang or jargon in any form.

Just so long as they don't try to teach it in school (Ebonics, I'm looking at you), and as long as relatively standard english (large regional variations apply here) is spoken in professional environments.

A big push in the IT department where I work is to say the whole thing, rather than just the acronym. There is, of course, the issue of things like GNU (which is often used), but we're told to just treat it like a brand name.

The only acronym you need

[HappyHead]

DMUANUY
Don't Make Up Acronyms - Nobody Understands You

Sigh.

[dewie]

Despite ever-increasing adoption of high tech gadgets in first-world nations, the terms used to describe what these new toys do often allude the people who buy them.

I don't usually like to complain about grammar and spelling in article summaries, but come on. Even of you'd used the word you meant, it'd still have been the wrong word.

Re:OMG fp

[Anonymous Coward]

fp? Now what the fuck is that?

It's not just Acronyms...

[XNine]

My parents get the idea of Memory (RAM, or to save those who don't know this acronym: Random Access Memory) for a computer crossed with "memory" (HDD or Hard Disk Drive). I tell my mother "you need more memory" and she instantly freaks out with "I HAVE TO UPGRAD ETHE HARD DRIVE AGAIN?!" No, mom. I still love her.

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

[chrylis]

This is the reason I'm always very careful to maintain the distinction between "memory" (RAM) and "space" (secondary storage). Non-geeks may not always understand just from the terms what the difference is, but I've found that most people can grasp the analogy between "memory" (things I have in my head) vs. "space" (things I can't remember but wrote down and put in my desk for next week).

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

[Skadet]

You know, back in high school when I sold computers for a chain, I came up with this helper:

Let's say your computer is a kitchen. Your hard drive is the cabinets, and your RAM is the countertop. If you have lots of cabinets and a small countertop, you can still cook whatever you want, you'll just be cleaning up and putting pots and pans away a lot more often. If you have a large counter, you can cook and cook until you're done, and clean it all up at once.

Nothing earthshattering, but I got a lot of "Ohhhh!!"s after explaining it that way.

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

[TempeTerra]

Oh, crap. Here comes the apocalypse.

And by these signs shall ye be warned:
natural order turned a-head -
the chicken rises from the pot;
laws of logic lose their sway -
appropriate analogies on Slashdot

Too many acronyms?!?

[EasyT]

I didn't RTFA, but WTF? FYI IANAL, but AFAIK this is slander, AKA lies. I'd sue FTW ASAP. J/K, LOL.

Re:Too many acronyms?!?

[tool462]

I didn't RTFA, but WTF? FYI IANAL, but AFAIK this is slander, AKA lies. I'd sue FTW ASAP. J/K, LOL.

I didn't reheat the fettucini alfredo, but why the fuss? Food you ingest isn't always noodles and liquid, but also fried and I know this is slander, all knavery and lies. I'd sue fraudulent temp waiters (and salt and pepper). Just kidding, love oily linguini.

"foxed"...wtf?

[rootrot]

Wait...Brits who don't understand tech acronyms are getting hit with foxes?!? Is this some strange backlash against the hunt ban? I am so confused....

Re:WTF?!

[markana]

If they would just RTFM, they'd grok the TLAs.

Lu5er5... :-)

A simple technological solution:

[Ichijo]

Developers of message board software could define macros like [IANAL] (better yet, let the message board admins define them), and let the software convert it to IANAL. It will show up as IANAL with a funny underline in the web browser, but when you hover your mouse over it, the abbreviation will be spelled out. (I would demonstrate it, but apparently Slashcode doesn't trust this particular markup.)