Plain English Campaign wants to bring down walls of technobabble, rule the world
By Darren Murph 
posted April 28th 2009 10:55AM
posted April 28th 2009 10:55AM
posted April 28th 2009 10:55AM
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So I looked up this Plain English Campaign and found out that they're essential a communications consulting company. It would appear that they help companies streamline their customer service and marketing materials to more clearly express their message. So all this story looks like to me is an attempt at some free publicity by poking at a popular topic.
"Peter Griffiths, who we can only imagine looks and speaks exactly like Peter Griffin".
Weak, very weak. Way to kill off a story by dumbing it down. Oh, wait. That's just the norm around here for you guys, eh?
Is this the same Peter that authored 'Technology Lingo for Dummies"?
THANK YOU PETER...
Now can someone please, in plain english, explain what exactly is "pr0n" ?
In my opinion, then main problem is the amount of acronyms and the insane amount of synonyms (with some minor changes).
For example :
MSN = LIVE
hosting = housing = cloud.
iphone = smarthphone = phone = cellular telephone.
bittorrent = torrent = utorrent = p2p = piratebay
Web 2.0 = Web = HTML Protocol.
AJAX = Javascript
Webservice = RPC = SOAP =Remote calling.
Don't forget the Side Boob Hour!!
And the Late night Smooth Jazz hour with Quagmire..
But South park is kinda better than what they serve on FG nowadays
I love sending packets over my Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol network in order to enlighten
Does this guy have Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Server stuck up his Universal Serial Bus port ?
It's more ridiclous than having a File Transfer Protocol sever outside the Subnetmask of an Extended Star Topology network.
Needless to say, this guy's common sense is loopy [ that is to say. 127.0.0.1 = ]
My favorite: PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) Card
aka
People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.
Have your heard, that the bird is the word?
wow
Oh great, now we have to memorize two sets of nouns for every computer related item: One for the technically literate, and the other for Dell users (oh snap).
I believe you're thinking one for the computer literate, and one for the Mac User
Actually, WiFi refers to Wireless Fidelity and was started as a logo program in an effort to make 802.11b devices actually compatible. Wireless LAN or WLAN is actually the correct term. WiFi is not. But thanks to the logo program, now every WLAN device is compatible and everyone calls it WiFi ;-) So uhm, I'm not sure what my point was. But I'm also not sure what would be a better term for Desktop or Digital TV. 'Computer-that-sits-on-your-desk' and 'Television-magicked-through-new-ways-of-magick' maybe. What's the point? People who don't understand this will be at a loss anyway unless they invest the effort of learning about new technologies. Whatever they are called.
ummmm people are dumb. this idea is dumb. its really not that hard, and most of the top consumers have dumbed everything down enough that even people who have no idea what they are using or how it works can use it. case and point apple/iphone/ipod/itunes, and I could go on....
sorry didn't mean to say consumers, but rather companies
So.... basically what they're saying is we now have to use a paragraph of "Simple English" to describe what one "technobabble" acronym makes perfectly clear?
Yeah, and a laser is just a really bright light.
While I can understand the goal of this whole thing, I really doubt the attention span of the average "Ow My Balls" drooler is going to do anyone any favors in the "ya got it?" department. Droolers are the same people who both lack the capacity to listen to a clear one-minute explanation of a subject and will sue or badmouth you at the drop of a hat to save face.
People just need to get smarter. That, or we need to bring back lawn darts.
Oh, right, my point was that names of technologies are a lot less dictated and a lot more evolving on their own. Someone attaches a buzzword or creates a WiFi logo to certify standard compatibility and before you know that's what everyone calls the thing. So I guess the only way to solve this problem is Buzzword Police, death penalty for saying the techy name of something and overall elimination of those who understand. Then the rest will all just call it thingy and be happy about it.
So instead of "wifi", you'd prefer:
"IEEE 802.11(a,b,g,n,etc)-compliant 2.4GHz(or 5GHz) frequency Wireless Local Area Network"
What part of that _doesn't_ make one sound like an asshole?
To get to the noteworthy part of the link:
TOP 10 CONFUSING TERMS
Dongle
Cookie
WAP
Phone jack
(Nokia) Navi Key
Time shifting
Digital TV
Ethernet
PC Suite
Desktop
So if the gadgethelpline really gets a lot of calls on those then it does indeed seem someone like the BBC should do that NBC-ad kind of thing 'the more you know' and make small ads that explain dongles and such, inbetween snooker for instance so the 'target audience' can pick it up easily for instance.
Should not be impossible to teach people 10 technical terms for starters.
And yeah I know of women who don't know the meaning of many of these words either, even though they aren't really retarded (disregard what you heard me scream from time to time), but more that they won't take the time to listen when you try to explain.
for me, the only "technobabble" word that I absolutly despise and will never use (except for here to show the word I hate) is: "blog" most people arent even aware that that word is short for "weblog". Are we that pressed for time that we have to drop two little letters off a word to try to make it sound better to some people? Its absolutly asinine! Whats wrong with using the full word? its not like its a long word to begin with! Lazy people, I swear!
Oh, and all the idiots around the world thats suddenly into Twitter... just stop. Or die. It'll do us all a favor. f-ing morons!
am i angry much? Yeah, maybe.
Most misused and diluted word too, blog, everything is called blog now (or vlog), even things that totally aren't, like.. erm.. engadget (sorry but it's true).
What's the point in dumbing down the language for everyone? If you really wanted to know what the words meant you could look it up in what, a few seconds? And if you don't care enough to look it up then why would you even care what it's called? How far does this go? How simple is simple enough? Are we going to go back to grunting and pointing at everything?
I'll give up using technobabble when lawyers give up legalese. Until then, tough crap commoners, I'm not dumbing down my language for you.
Is it my imagination or does Peter Griffin appear to have balls on his chin?
No, just testicles.
Seriously? change the words? That won't help since most of the words with acceptance of the acronyms were created because there were no words for them. If they simplify the lingo these things will most likely sound similar to something else that exists and just create even more confusion especially in retail. I worked in retail for three years and the best thing is to teach them a little bit of lingo when you can. As for defining the terms there is always wikipedia or urbandictionary someone should tell these people about those sources. The overall problem here is not the lingo itself it is the masses stupidity and laziness. If they so desired they could easily find out the meaning of any of these terms but they won't even try. No amount of tweaking the jargon is going the fix that. It is not the industry it is society.
If we're going to standardize "technobabble," we also need to get the GB to GB thing correct...I hate buying a 750 GB hard drive and only getting 698 actual GB.
You know what I hate? That CPU speeds stopped being useful indicators of progress. 500mhz was better than 66 mhz. 2.4ghz was better than 500mhz. Then they started going dual processor and other crap and instead of going up, the numbers now stay in the range of 1.2 to 3.5 ghz but have different flavors of speed like duo, tegra, etc...
Give us a word like Simulflops or something and make it easier to know which computers have the most processing power. The original Ghz prcessor could equal one simulflop per minute. The latest stuff would be multiples of that.
Also, I thought dongle (digital tv, and phonejack) were a useful words that everyone knew and could relate to. RGB, Component and Composite on the other hand do get annoying though. How about fixing those stupidities. Also, I hate the word tweet, w/ a passion.
It's Peter Griffin, not Griffith.
This is one of the most idiotic proposals I've ever seen. If you are too stupid / lazy / ignorant to understand what something is or how it works, then you shouldn't be using it. It is absurd to have to dumb down the language because some people can't be bothered to learn some new words. Stupid people are going to be confused no matter what you do, so it is a waste to cater to them.
How do you make a phrase like "digital TV" or "desktop" more idiot-friendly? Shall we replace every single technical word in the language with a full paragraph of explanation just so that dullards can follow along?
I think the major problem is this:
You have like... this curve of understanding necessary to complete a given task. It's probably not linear, but assume it is.
Imagine the X axis is the task, and the Y axis is understanding necessary to complete it.
For a task like "Draw a circle", the understanding is pretty low. For a task like "Bake some cinnamon rolls from the refrigerated dough can things", the understanding is a little higher. For a task like "Install Ad-Aware and scan your computer it's a tad higher.
It goes up further, of course, so that "Upgrade your computer's RAM" is relatively high, and then "Install debian and transfer important files from your Windows box" becomes nigh impossible for 99.99% of the population, and the 0.01% probably lied.
So if you take that middle ground where terms like "dongle" and "hard disk" come in and try to dumb it down to bake ready-made cinnamon rolls level, you've just created a gigantic gap. Suddenly there's no "building up" to installing debian or cleaning out your registry or changing BIOS settings any more. It's just a gigantic chasm of "I've never even HEARD of a megahertz, much less a multiplier!"
You can't just take things that are "kinda hard" and make them easy. And if you could, you'd then have "easy" and "impossible."
I just hate that big chunk of ignorant dumbass waiting dormant in everyone. It manifests itself in the worst ways...
Words have a very specific purpose in our language; that is for the communication of ideas. One way a language changes is by the addition of new words to explain something new. Should we change words for other aspects of our society so that we use plain English? No. As clear stated by others, it is better to a specific terminology that long descriptions.
"Push downwards the square shaped thing that has capital letter N painted on it. Then Push downwards the square shaped thing that has capital letter O painted on it."
This is just silly.
Dongle -> Tiny Data Storage device.
Cookie -> Hidden internet data.
WAP -> Simple mobile internet
Phone jack -> Audio plug.
Time shifting -> Television recorder.
Digital TV -> Digital television transmission reciever. (All TV's are digital, it's the transmission that's different)
Ethernet -> Internet cable.
Desktop -> Initial computer screen.
Rubix cube -> Permutation toy.
Yeah, technology has these names for a reason.
Although it would be pretty cool if everyone called thing by what it actually is than it's brand name.
I want to see a supermarket that sells entirely brandless food in white packaging with bold black
"ORANGE DRINK"
"THE SALT"
You should try harder on that ethernet description.
And no not all TV's are digital, there are tons and tons of analog CRT's in the world, and analog TV systems.
And dongle is never a data storage device, nobody calls a flash disk a dongle, a dongle is a USB device that isn't storage, like a digital TV receiver or a WiFi transceiver or a bluetooth transceiver or a protocol adapter or a small encryption device andsoforth, but never a flash drive, it's a small USB device that isn't storage.
Sort of funny that you are here being an example of someone who doesn't know what a dongle is :)
One small correction, a dongle doesn't have to be exclusively USB really.