So look, we fully understand that not everyone "gets" technology-related lingo -- we've had to walk our mums and dads through setting up a WLAN router with a WPA2 password and 1337 encryption many, many times. But this... this is just comical. Peter Griffiths, who we can only imagine looks and speaks exactly like Peter Griffin (pictured), is hoping that his Plain English Campaign can knock down the "walls of techobabble" by "pulling our heads out of the digital clouds and using plain English." Ironic, really, given that most of the technologically illiterate wouldn't know that a
digital cloud actually refers to an off-site storage hub where information is exchanged. At any rate, it seems the campaign is pushing to have flummoxing terms such as digital TV, phone jack, desktop and dongle (yes, seriously) changed, or at worse, have them defined clearly in a dictionary that precisely no one would ever read.
posted Apr 28th 2009 10:55AM
Hands off my dongle!
So what would they prefer we use over "dongle"?
"That thingy that sticks out of your computer from a USB or other port"?
They have names because things have names. These words exist because no other concise word in the english language fits the meaning.
If you haven't figured out what the name means, go look it up. Many people don't know what exactly a carburetor does, but I don't see anyone bitching about car lingo. Take some personal responsibility and figure it out if it's that important to you to know what it is.
Idiots
How about when tech manufacturers and retailers label products to hide deficiencies, like the use of "Built-in" and "Ready" or "Compatible".
Isn't "Phone" techno-babble as well? It's pretty old, but I don't think they called talking boxes "Telephones" in the past. This goes the same for Television (AKA: TV)...
Where does he draw the line? Horseless Carriage, Buggy, Tractor/Trailer/Semi, Plastic...
There's no such thing as "Plain English." English is a conglomerate of languages and terminology.
Come on, "dongle" is practically an onomatopoeia. it just screams "DONGLE" at you. Doooonglleee.
@ Juaquin: 1up to you for that Idiots shot at the end. LMAO.
So the Plain English term for a "Fanboy" would be "Troll".
FIRST and foremost...backscratchaaaaaahhhhh...
I wanted to give you a --, but just couldn't for some reason.
@Templarian:
Took care of it for you.
It's buttscratchaaaaaa, sir.
FIRST and foremost....you weren't.
SECONDLY....the reference you were looking for is "Butt-scratchaaaah!". Seriously....how could Peter say that so many times in 2 minutes and you STILL not get it?
So, this is DUMB, seriously look at other countries... we use all the ENGLISH techo language , instead of our own language, and "Usb Flash Drive" is so much better that "Universelle serielle Schnitstellen(USS) Flash laufwerk "
this is contra Productive to how todays economy works, at some point there will be only 1 language...
I agree, but think that in the future there will only be two languages. English and Mandarin. And we will wear trenchcoats, carry pistols and shotguns, and avoid the Reavers.
English tech lingo translatetd to german FAIL!
You missed the flash!
so
USB flash drive
=
Universelles serielles Schnitstellen blitz laufwerk
;)
I would agree that it sometimes would be a healthy measurement to use more of your own language (nothing is worse than Denglish, a mixture of german and english), but to generally make every tech word simply, please no.
So instead of CPU we al start using "Central Processing Unit" again?
a crap, thats to complicated.
How bout "rectangle thing inside your computer with pins on the underside thats made out of silicone (not the silicone you use in tits) that makes your computer go"
And stuff like MHz and GB should be changed to stuff like fast, or very fast, or big or very big.
The funny thing is USB is a trademark and doesn't really need translating into German, while flash is not, so should probably be translated...
I disagree, I think we need this...not for the technological terms, but for all the stupid marketing/media buzzwords they keep inventing. Can someone explain to me *exactly* what makes a site 'Web 2.0'? A mashup? What exactly is crowd-sourcing? Hell, what exactly is a blog? Is Engadget a blog or news site?
Now, I can say I have a IEEE802.3-compliant Cat6 UTP Ethernet cable with molded RJ-45 connectors and, while it sounds complex, you can look up and verify EXACTLY what I am talking about.
Tehcnobabble isn't the problem...it's all the invented pseudotechnobabble. Kind of like the word I just invented. Psuedotechnobabble. Say it five times fast.
Engadget is a gadget-news-blurb site using blogging software.
There, that was in plain english.. I think
Oh and the germans seem to call them 'USB-sticks' rather than flash drives or thumb drives or what have you.
@Qwert
Breast implants use silicone, CPU's are made from silicon. Silicon is an element. You fail the internet.
web 1.0 = static pages, static content
web 2.0 = static pages, user generated content
web 3.0 = user generated page and content
crowd-sourcing = wikipedia pretty much
Or we could just write all our manuals with the word "thing". Plug that thing into that thing and press that thing down and it will automatically make the things in the air go to your laptop. If that thing didn't make it work you may have to pull that thing out and plug it back into the same thing you pulled it out of.
As long as its color coded everything is easier.
Dont forgett to go to that thing on your desk press that start thing press "run" and type CMD
you will see a black thing popping up (dont be scared) type in "ipconfig" , now copy the ip adress to that internet thing and change the last digit to a 1.... now you will see a password thing comming up...
classic
@ Finnschi
Fail.
Color coding is also a failure. If color coding worked, people would be able to hook things up to their tv's.
When don't they work on lawyer speak. That would benefit many more people.
if my mom (who's turning 50 this year) can understand how to put ringers on her blackberry and how to connect her laptop for her business to her linksys router.. and knows how to call Cox Communications when her cable modem is acting "wonky", then there is no excuse for people to not at least understand the basics. desktop? really now?
if you can't understand the terms, then you probably shouldn't be touching the tech to begin with. go back to your Selectric and washboard.
Does your mom know how to change her own oil? Rotate her tires? Change plugs? Does she know what efi is? Does she know the what the function of a catalytic converter is?
Doe she drive a car? Should she if she doesn't understand those terms?
at least she knows what "yield to pedestrians" is... or what gas peddal is... (at least i hop so)
hey how about if we just go back to the days of the Pony Express and folks washing laundry with lye in a tub of hot water and hanging it out on a rope line to dry.
although the cartoon does exaggerate much, the notion is actually rather reasonable. There are folks out there that are smart enough to learn the lingo if the young pups would bother to explain it. but instead a lot of folks just role their eyes and walk away cause some 60 year old that wants to get a computer to video chat with grandkids across the country doesn't understand the difference between a hard drive and ram.
No, I don't change my oil myself, but I'm not demanding that they change what they call all the parts so I have a better shot at understanding them.
jeadly is Prokanda's mom?
@skeezle:
do you have to attack every post that I make? stop jerking off to my avatar, ya freak.
and yes, my mom DOES know what all of those terms are... back when she was young she had a jacked up dodge duster with cherry-bomb mufflers that she raced with the locals.
she's 50, so of course she doesn't do the work herself, my dad does it. just like I do all of my own car work.
I hope this satisfied your trollism mr. fake-ass-ultraviolence.
@Prokanda
Well, I was just making a point - but since you want to bring it to that level;
Yeah, I'm jerking off to your avatar because I totally have a thing for red headed guys who's styles are that of a poseur from 1997. I can just hear the Limp Bizkit coming from your avatar.
Now back to your mom - It is impressive that she can do all that stuff with you hiding under her skirt! - where does this tech savvy motorhead cougar hang out?
Think I might like to have a go at the ol' in out in out with the Baboochka.
similarly, neither of my parents understand what I mean when I say click and drag. Also, I have had to show them how to put the USB shaped object into the USB shaped port to hook up the digital camera to the laptop. Kids with those little block sets with star shaped blocks and the holes with star shaped holes can figure that shit out. 5 Year olds that player with LEGOS can figure it out. But somehow, it eludes my parents.
But they have no problem downloading k-dramas and watching them all damn day long. It's a silly world.
This is pretty true. My mom turned 57 last year and is pretty technical proficient. She runs a very large forum for baby boomers. When I went down for Easter she told me her laptop died so she downloaded xp and reinstalled it. People just need to learn what their computer actually does.
ZOMG "phone jack" is such a confusing technical term, I give up!
Then again, I change my own oil so I must be a technical genius.
Would he rather that we used more descriptive terms? Instead of "digital TV", why not "continuous over-the-air broadcast of sound and video signals containing multiple channels and extra computer programs"?
Jargon exists for a reason, it's a quick way to express an idea. Some of it's new. The word "television" was jargon once.
it's devotchka not babooshka (or whatever you said that was incrediblyWRONG)
I don't know why these people do not learn what all of these terms mean. I don't demand that an auto engineer explain the significance of an engines compression ratio to me. These terms are made to simplify the way we talk about a certain field
Is it so hard to google what the terms mean?
Nice one (am i the only one who gets this?
Wait, what's a "google!!?"
Google it.
Well, I could be wrong, but I believe google is an old, old wooden ship that was used during the Civil War era.
-please someone get that reference.
actually, it's German for "whale's vagina"
Well, that's not entirely unreasonable.
"Desktop" can refer to a horizontal (as opposed to tower) computer, any non-portable computer, the Windows desktop with the icons, a windowing operating environment itself, or a few other things.
"Digital TV" can mean ATSC broadcasts, a TV with some sort of digital filter or processing, a TV that accepts ATSC broadcasts, any non-analog bitstream-based private broadcasting (cable, satellite), any type of HD programming, or microwave broadcasting.
Technology-related terminology is often needlessly confusing. The article brings up FireWire/i.Link/Lynx as a good example.
don't forget ieee1394
Right, but companies are already calling things by these names instead of their technical specifications to make it easier for consumers. You're telling me this dude's brain wouldn't explode if shelves just had boxes labeled with IEEE xxx.xx devices?
And they have duplicate products on single standards because of trademarks which are supposed to protect the consumer by clarifying who is making the product.
That's why context clues and reading comprehension are your friends.
Ah see I had a theory on this ( read it other day) in that as this is fro ma British survey we don't actually use the term digital TV that often. Normally it's Freeview, or Sky for satellite and Virgin for cable. yep we only have one of each. So they get referred to their brand names "do you have Virgin". o h British equivelant of Tivo/DVR/timeshifting would be Sky+. Even though you can get Freeview DVR's they get described as "recording it liek Sky+ does". VOD is Iplayer, or "like Iplayer".
It just seem's with tech it's easier to latch onto the company that does the tech, not the tech term itself. Social networking is "like myspace/facebook", it's just apparently the way tech lingo has evolved in the UK.
Some of their examples of the most popular areas of confusion are absurd. "WAP"? Does anybody use WAP any more, never mind the term? "Navi key"? When does that come up, outside of a Nokia manual? It's "that button" to almost everyone.
Which WAP? Wireless Access Point? Wireless Application Protocol? Millions of people use both technologies daily.
WAP = outdated first attempts of web on phones only vaguely remembered by modern man.
Sure there might be remnants of it used, but common when people talk about WAP they talk about phones from 2003 and not about some underlying protocol, so yeah WAP is not known by people not because it's too technical but because only some manuals/boxcovers of cheap outdated phones that can't run real webbrowsers mention it and people go 'what the hell is WAP'?.
My 78 year old grandmother knows the terms RJ45, Ethernet, dongle AND router. If she can learn, the rest of the god-damned world can too!
I'd like to know who can't understand 'phone jack'. Seriously.
Why would anyone want to steal a telephone?
I have no idea----
People who don't understand "phone jack", come on guys, you're not even trying.
Simple English Wikipedia ftw
i agree very heartily with the title-text (mouse-over).
http://xkcd.com/547/
also, i'm not sure what this guy's goal is. is to to add a second, "simpler" set of names to things? or to change their names completely? i don't think either would really work.
Wikipedia? what's that? and ftw? (actually I don't know what ftw means....)
In any case, there was a local newspaper article recently attempting to describe what Twitter is. They came up with "microblogging". Like that clears things up for someone who doesn't know what Twitter is.
ftw = 'for the win'
also
ftl = 'for the loss'
eg Woot! Taco Bell FTW!!! [1 hour later] Taco Bell FTL.
When the Peter Griffiths said that he wanted people to get their heads out of the digital clouds, he didn't mean "an off-site storage hub where information is exchanged."
He was making a play on words regarding the common english phrase "get your head out of the clouds." He gave no indication that he actually knew what a digital cloud was, and if anything, evidenced the contrary.
Another example of something being called "ironic" when it is anything but.
Now there's a perfect example of the need to break down English into some more basic English right there. Who the hell knows what 'ironic' means anyway? It's just technobabble for English majors.
Irony is just bad luck, at least according to Alanis Morrissette
We'll get around to this as soon as we have our lawyers write up a contract we can all understand stipulating the underlying ramifications of manufacturing said "Plain English Dictionary" (by Plain English we mean the native language or most commonly used language in the given region of publication and any language of large populations of the non-native language, by which we mean...)
Yea, get right on that!
Peter (when he's hungover): This sucks worse than that time I went to that museum. (Flashback to childhood, standing in museum looking at dinosaur
skeltons.)
Peter (as a child): Why did all the dinosaurs die out?
Man at Museum: Because you touch yourself at night.
Character in Family Guy: This is like that time that is totally unrelated to the story
-flashback-
Aforementioned character: Question/setup
Character pertaining to flashback: Sometimes funny but often rubbish punchline
/flashback
-and repeat-
On the topic of Family Guy, the little vignette scenes used to be funny, but they're overdoing it now on every show with unfunny and sometimes stupidly long scenes. I often find myself skipping over them, a prime example being the Christian Bale one. FFS we got the joke after 5 seconds!
On the topic of terminology, there's no alternative but to learn at least the basic jargon of any specialised field. For example, in biology, there are bacteria, viruses and fungi, some of which are pathogens. It would be a mistake to abstract them down to the common term "germs" since bacteria and viruses are different, and not all bacteria are pathogens. Another one would be in physics - there are formal definitions of the terms speed, velocity and acceleration. It's possible to drive in a circle at a constant speed but with changing velocity and continuous acceleration. In a layman's definition, velocity and speed are interchangeable, and acceleration is simply "speeding up", causing potential for confusion.
Ever wonder if Seth MacFarlane gets his ass kicked? I mean, whom HASN'T he pissed off (besides the obvious boatloads of homosexuals)?
This is a slippery slope into "a series of tubes." Why base technical jargon on the understanding level of those least likely to understand it?
Simple English Wikipedia, prepare to be flooded!
Sad mistake, its not the lingo that people dont understand. Its the whole tech field. I try to explain things in plain english to clients all the time... doesnt matter, the moment you talk about a computer related issue peoples brains go numb. idiots
What is this "English" you speak of?
Who an where is this Eng fellow and why the fuk do I hafta uuz hiz langwage. Peeps of the werld unite against deez DB's. Git on 'er now luh.
Ah stupidity... How I have missed you..
See, THIS is why I hate people...
I said I hated people to a Cop once, man he got all fucking weird on me. I agree I hate people as well but it's the ones I hate that wouldn't understand the statement "I hate People" as well.
People are dumb en masse...
aww cool you hate people too? yay
I see we're all misanthropic for the same reason.
Did people complain when digital watches came about too?
Plain english is too confusing, I say we convert everything into plain Esperanto, then everyone will know what we're talking about it?
Actually you know whats even better, if we just replace every technology word with the word "technobabble"
"Hello, IT, I cant seem to get my computer to work, the technobabble is technobabbleing, and the technobabble in the right hand corner of the technobabble is not technobabbeling. Iv tried technobabbeling the technobabble but nothing works....what should I do?"
Arrrgggg this kind of stuff to make things easier for people just bothers me so. Instead of people actually taking a moment to learn what things are they just start a campaign to make things easier. Its like when some people felt that proper english was too hard to teach to kids so there was a campaign to teach slang words as part of a curriculum in some schools.
Its not a way to solve a problem, its like putting a band aid on a finger thats been chopped off, it only hides the problem, doesn't fix anything.
buttscratchaaaaaa?
Does mean doctors will start speaking english as well? And math teachers, consultants, PR people, mechanics, engineers, etc..
Or.. You could just sit down for 2 minutes and learn some new words instead of perpetuating the 'I'm proud of being ignorant' mentality that we have going on in the US...
As products and terms worm into the mainstream, it's hard to say where English ends and Technobabble begins. I tend to avoid too many acronyms in a conversation. I might say, "Who is the Internet Service Provider.. you know.. the ISP?" and then use ISP from there out.
Depends on the audience.
Marketing guys are the worst... they toss that stuff around like too many fonts in a flier.
This article suggests that the Public English Campaign exists solely to knock down the "walls of techobabble", but if you check out their site [http://www.plainenglish.co.uk], they are really trying to prevent misleading information from being presented to the public. The idea has its merits. I'm sure you can think of one occasion where a friend or family was given false information about technology (e.g. consumers being misled to believe that more megapixels means a better camera).
But understand that their campaign exists at a large extent around government and legalese. I see Creative Commons being one example of Public English (I'm not aware of any alignment between the two groups), where what used to be complex licensing agreements were whittled down to a couple words that made life easier. Overall, I don't think they are trying to dumb down the language but rather simplify a statement so it makes sense to more people.
Think about this the next time you're asked to agree to a 50 page Terms of Service.
These terms can be very misleading, which is more pertinent than helping the confused. Just look at "digital TV", and how many cable companies tried to push users into upgrading their cable packages.
I sometimes tell people to just goto wikipedia but then the techterms are explained with more techterms and that means they have to look up those and it gets too much for them.
So perhaps a wiki for techterms for dummies might be a good idea, don't call them dummies though that will scare them off, simply lie and call it something else ;)
I found that I don't have the talent to simplify things to the level required, but I hear some people have and they can run it.
where is lois when you need her? someone's gotta smack some sense into peter....
umm..with Quagmire ?
Giggity
This is a bad idea. Simple English is for people who do not know English good.
The hard words are for smart people. If we remove the hard words, the smart people will not be able to do smart things. This is a bad thing.
"...who do not know English good."
*chuckle, chuckle*. WELL played.
Well, plain English doofuses, it's really not simple.
In fact, I DARE you to try and simplify techno-babble.
What's a dictionary? Is that like a Wiki?
As my grandma used to say, "tough shit" I'm all for helping people that don't understand but want to, but let's face it, if you don't really understand what something is, describing it in "plain English" probably isn't going to help that much. Most people just need to know to plug the USB cable in, they don't need to know that USB stands for universal serial bus, and even if they did, they wouldn't have a clue what serial means in this case, or what a bus is other than a big yellow thing with wheels that go round and round.
Just another douchebag trying to solve another non-problem.
or as my dad used to say
"if you're stupid, suffer"
Listen, I don't understand anything in this post or anything that any of you techno-people are babbling on about in the comments. I'm leaving this internet right here until you can better explain yourselves. To be honest, I'm mostly afraid of the word "flummoxing," but you can blame it on "phone jack" if you must. Hmmph, good day!
I wouldn't leave that internet there if I were you, somebody might steal it.
I'm not so bothered about "technobabble" since if something is named something then that's its name and nothing is really going to either change that or make it easier to understand. However, I hate acronyms with a fiery passion and their use, without an explanation of their meaning first by the author/speaker, should be banned. I swear there is a department in my company whose job is solely to come up with crappy acronyms for product names...
Yes this is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. So by this guys reasoning, those of us who do not understand mechanic lingo yet still drive cars, will be lobbying to change things as follows:
Rims must be referred to as round things
Brake pads are now those deals that make you stop
A master cylinder is now a sippy cup
Muffler is a quieter downer
etc
Sheesh, idiot
Why all the press for his idea... IT HAS BEEN DONE. Tell grandma and grandpa to go to Wikipedia.com and get the most basic well written explanation of anything in the world, including Digital Cloud.
I hate saying the work dongle to customers...