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. "

Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

pepople cant memorize computer industry acronyms

I'll recycle a remark of mine on LWN

The TLA namespace is just too crowded.

Thus was born the Extented TLA, or ETLA.
Some people trying for a DOD contract took the ETLA and made it Joint, resulting in a JETLA.
Inflation came along, and we needed to manage JETLAs via a Group key.
Feelings of JETLAG came as no surprise.

"foxed"...wtf?

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:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

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

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.

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

A big push in the IT department where I work is to say the whole thing, rather than just the acronym.

I think you meant to say Information Technology department. Might want to send out a company-wide electronic mail so that others don't make this mistake.
 

Re:Obligatory PCMCIA joke here

This reminds me of when I took my A+ certs back in the 90's when you still had to memorize the acroynyms and what they stood like PCI, ISA, SCSI, and EISA,that other properietary standard IBM used (that I can't remember even the acronym...I remember what they looked like... those special blue slot cards), and maybe a dozen other legacy technology names and things.

But yet during my job at any place... Anywhere... No one ever questioned about what the actual acronym but rather what the difference was... As in... PCI was the new faster standard on ATX motherboards and ISA was the long black slots for older systems (even though you couldn't buy a new computer at that point without both).

These days I can't remember any of them except International Standards Association and I'm assuming EISA is Enchandced? (I even kept an EISA card around to show off to people).

So I think people don't really need to remember what the acronym really says, but what the technology does, because otherwise its a waste of space in your brain in 5 years when the technology is no longer in use.

actually...

The technology industry is perhaps the most guilty of all industries when it comes to love of acronyms

I'd give that distinction to the government and/or military :)

Re:WTF?!

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

Lu5er5... :-)

The only acronym you need

DMUANUY
Don't Make Up Acronyms - Nobody Understands You

Sigh.

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:Sigh.

It's because we try to show how intelligent and sophisticated we are by using words we can't spell, and whose meaning we don't really know.

aren't we humans a bunch of wankers? ;-)

It's not just Acronyms...

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...

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...

I am not into ducks.

The slashdotter doth protest too much, methinks.

Re:It's not just Acronyms...

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...

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?!?

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?!?

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.

Advancement of Technology

As technology gets more advanced, less understanding of it is required to be able to use it. My mom doesn't know how to change the oil in her car, but she can still drive it.

They are called acronyms

and they are bad when overused. Its not a problem with geekspeak. There are often times when I am frustrated with people's overuse of acronyms, especially in non-computer environments. So don't blame us.

No problem

The industry is soon going to make people fully aware of the importance of acronyms in the tech products they use. The lesson will start with 'DRM'...

Newsflash!

In other news, the sky is blue, the earth is round and objects fall down!

Of course a large percentage of folks who don't use a particular technology don't know the acronyms used to refer to that technology. I'm sure back in the 40s, 70% of the population didn't know that TV was an acronym for television. For that matter, I bet 20 years ago (early days of the Personal Computer), 70% of the population didn't know what PC meant either.

Good job slashdot! If this were fark, the article would get the 'obvious' tag, and the submitter would be deserving of the 'dumbass' tag.

what?

I didn't know a lot of the stuff that they put on here before I started coming on /. because in England people don't use IM to talk about it, people would usually say in full or say "messenger" (some people even use "msn" like a brand name for the whole lot - I think AIM is more common in the US)... so the poll seems a bit strange. People just have names that they know things by that they and their friends would use. Besides that, I've never met someone with a PVR anyway, I think the poll seems very American on British audiences it doesn't seem that amazing.

Other than that; "OMG!!!!11! teh l33t pwnd teh n00bs!!!one11!"

A simple technological solution:

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 <abbr title="I Am Not A Lawyer">IANAL</abbr>. 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.)

Acronym resuse and abuse

It is bad enough to have a plethora of acronyms, there are names of things that look like acronyms (JAVA, UNIX), acronyms that have multiple meanings (DBM, GPS), acronyms that have other meanings when used as words (AMPS, BIT). One unusual acronym is 'PA' which can mean Power Amp, Public Address, Prince Albert, Pennsylvania, Panama, Physician's Assistant, Power of Attorney, Press Agent, Production Assistant, and probably more.

Re:OMG fp

fp? Now what the fuck is that?

Re:TLAs

I suppose it's worth mentioning that TLA isn't a TLA. Well, it's not the TLA you think it is. It's a Three-Letter-Abbreviation. See, the amusing thing is that an acronym is a word. It's pronounced. FBI and CIA are examples of non-acronyms. FUBAR and SCSI are examples of acronyms. Abbreviations on the other hand are simple short versions of things.