Top 10 Confusing Jargon

[SteveBentley]

A new survey on how people understand IT terminology has been published:

BBC NEWS | Technology | Gadget jargon still confuses many

I have to say that given the items on the list, none of which are particularly difficult concepts to get your head round, I despair at this comment in the article:

Peter Griffiths, campaign secretary for the Plain English Campaign, told the BBC that there were ways to make things easy for users to understand.

"We need to pull our head out of the digital clouds and use plain English," he said.

How about users pull their head out of the sand and realise that technology is a bit more complicated than a toaster and you might have to learn something about it in order to use it? And that by learning the proper names for things you might buy the right item when you need an accessory?

I really don't see how there can be any grievance with Dongle, Cookie and Phone Jack, are of which are names given to technology when invented. Giving a new piece of technology a new name is surely inevitable, and an addition to the vocabulary of plain English? And how anybody can object to "Digital TV" as not being plain English is beyond me.

Surely the need to spoon feed consumers is outweighed by the need for technical people to be able to communicate unambiguously with each other?

[Butuz]

As Jin Says - you don't need to be a qualified mechanic to drive a car.

With ICT we should be aiming for the fact that you shouldn't need to be a qualified Techncician or have to recieve mass training just to use the computers. It's a long way off though! I'd say 5-10 years!

Butuz

[SteveBentley]

But using the same analogy, do you use a "steering wheel" or a "that big round thing"?

[Geoff]

The difference is, cars are an established techonology with decades of development behind them just so anyone can drive them.

Computers are new and we're still figuring out how to make them easy to use. This happens with all new technologies.

Go look at early cars and see how easy they were to drive in comparison to todays cars for example. The venerable Model T perhaps?

How I learned to drive a Model T Ford-by Percy Newman. In 1924, this 17 year old learns to drive a "T" the hard way. Fun reading! The Model T Ford Club International history & lore.

[Theblacksheep]

The difference is, cars are an established techonology with decades of development behind them just so anyone can drive them.

If you take driving lessons, a theory test and a practical test which also contains a considerable amount of technical amount of technical language not described as jargon. This is also just for the movement of the object rather than the modification or repair of vehicles for which requires another level of technical informaition.

Most things have higher languages, it just so happens that computer jargon are abbreviations rather than latin.

The gui has given a false perspective on the the technicalities of a computer.

[CHR1S]

So how do these people use their in dash satnav and trip computers?

[HodgeHi]

Surely you would just do what most would do if you don't understand something. Look it up. All this dumbing down nonsense. No wonder we aren't getting anywhere in educating kids

[Gerry]

In my first on-the-road driving lesson, the instructor asked me if I knew what the circular thing in front of me was for. I asked him if he was kidding! Apparently, from his experience, some people hadn't got a clue what it's for