There's a point of equilibrium that most print magazines have found...
Obviously, though, that balance isn't obliged to happen where you might want it; many print magazines have a far higher ratio of ad-to-content than we're seeing online at the moment.
Actually, this is a good point. Far too many of us geek-types (by which I naturally mean without prejudice scientists and engineers) try to either justify our existence or prove our worth by throwing around jargon even in a general setting. "Intelligence by vocabularly," you might say.
It's certainly true that there are concepts and procedures which are too complex to explain in layman's terms, but it's inexcusable not to make an effort to allow people without a PhD to understand your work.
Take the case of the Chemistry Nobel that Zewail won; the official press release describes his work as analagous to creating slow-motion film of a chemical reaction using the world's fastest camera. This is a nice, down-to-earth explanation of what is actually a rather complicated thing, which strikes me as valuable.
This might be why so many technical classes are taught so poorly in universities. The professor either doesn't care or doesn't take the time to relate the subject matter to actual experiences that the student may have had. I'm not talking about doing a lot of hand holding, but refer again to the subject of the Chem award. It's more useful to the uninitiated to say that you're taking a bunch of pictures of the reaction so that you can play it back in slow motion than to just barf "femtosecond chemistry" all over your frosh class at the first lecture. Starting out this way provides a natural progression into the actual mechanics of the laser imaging technique and the students will have a general idea of where they're going at the outset.
IT folks are certainly no less guilty of this. I've gotten farther explaining network wiring saying "differential signal" than by simply spouting off with "UTP CAT5." Absolute vs. relative paths? Start with a zip code or area code analogy and your criminally ignorant users will be much happier.
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There's a point of equilibrium that most print magazines have found ...
Obviously, though, that balance isn't obliged to happen where you might want it; many print magazines have a far higher ratio of ad-to-content than we're seeing online at the moment.
Actually, this is a good point. Far too many of us geek-types (by which I naturally mean without prejudice scientists and engineers) try to either justify our existence or prove our worth by throwing around jargon even in a general setting. "Intelligence by vocabularly," you might say.
It's certainly true that there are concepts and procedures which are too complex to explain in layman's terms, but it's inexcusable not to make an effort to allow people without a PhD to understand your work.
Take the case of the Chemistry Nobel that Zewail won; the official press release describes his work as analagous to creating slow-motion film of a chemical reaction using the world's fastest camera. This is a nice, down-to-earth explanation of what is actually a rather complicated thing, which strikes me as valuable.
This might be why so many technical classes are taught so poorly in universities. The professor either doesn't care or doesn't take the time to relate the subject matter to actual experiences that the student may have had. I'm not talking about doing a lot of hand holding, but refer again to the subject of the Chem award. It's more useful to the uninitiated to say that you're taking a bunch of pictures of the reaction so that you can play it back in slow motion than to just barf "femtosecond chemistry" all over your frosh class at the first lecture. Starting out this way provides a natural progression into the actual mechanics of the laser imaging technique and the students will have a general idea of where they're going at the outset.
IT folks are certainly no less guilty of this. I've gotten farther explaining network wiring saying "differential signal" than by simply spouting off with "UTP CAT5." Absolute vs. relative paths? Start with a zip code or area code analogy and your criminally ignorant users will be much happier.