There Is No Tech Speak for Non Techies
They simply don’t care. Just like some of us aren’t into gardening, or art, or cooking, or fashion, or cars, or scotch, or philately or numismatics.
They start with a vocabulary of 15 words:
computer, mouse, monitor, hard drive, printer, scanner, email, Microsoft, Windows (whatever version they have), Mac, internet, Google (even George Bush uses The Google), Wikipedia, Amazon, Expedia
(words such as Sign In, My Account, Pay Now, and credit card number are just plain English)
A problem might result in adding vocabulary such as OS, browser, cache, or spyware. Recreation might add YouTube. Collecting or bargain hunting might add eBay.
They don’t know how any of it actually works, and aren’t interested enough to find out. I know hundreds if not thousands of people like this, and some of them are 20 rather than 60 years old. They all own and use a computer.
Earlier today I was in a conversation with a non-tech entrepreneur in which a mutual friend/associate developer in his 20s was mentioned, and I used the term app.
“What’s an app?”
So I tried starting a rudimentary explanation, got 5 words into it, and was interrupted by,
“What does it stand for?”
Application, I answered. Silence. Then,
“What is an application? Give me an example of one.”
An example. There isn’t an example in this user’s vocabulary. So I resorted to trying to set up analogies.
The cable box on top of your television receives a signal from a satellite that unlocks the doorway for all the channel programming you pay for to flow through and appear on your tv.
I’m not positive, but I think I heard a yawn, and the unspoken thought that ‘I pay for cable. I watch it. Why should I care how it gets here?’.
Since part of the interest behind the original question was how is an app a way to make money, I tried again.
Your car is the pc …uh..computer. Power steering and cruise control could be described as apps.
(Actually, I think that power steering might be analogized to an app, whereas cruise control is closer to a widget, but this is a discussion to have with someone else…)
At the end of this segment of the conversation, my friend said,
“I think I understood about 10% of all this. It’s very boring.”
Right. Did I mention that the concepts involved are relevant to his business?
There are many many millions of people like this. Depending on their demographic, they’re researching or just looking something up on Wikipedia via Google, checking news, browsing briefly.
It is popular to think that these people are all really old, and that as new generations arrive it will all change. I originally thought that way also. In the past year I have been constantly surprised by elderly ladies publishing on the web and young people saying they don’t have time or interest for all this.
Do geeks outnumber philatelists? Probably, but I wonder by how much.
New generations might have 100 instead of 15 word vocabularies, but they won’t be all techies or geeks. The internet will never be ‘explained’ to non tech people with words. The only bridge to them is to make something here that interests them, and in order to develop that, speaking human is essential.
July 27th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Oh, jeez. I run into this all the time, and because of where I am, the “more 20 y/o than 60″ comment is apt.
I have a devil of a time explaining even to others in the field what I do, because those who don’t know me don’t realize that I have, in fact, been doing this since Netscape 1.1 was the latest and greatest. So I’ve been around long enough to become competent (if not in most cases actually outstanding) in at least three-quarters of the skillsets that go into building a site.
And when I comes to the general public, it usually goes something like “I do Web stuff, but I’ll skip the long explanation since it bores to death anyone who isn’t genuinely interested in the details.”
Your piece explains exactly how THAT works.
July 27th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Hi Ben! I gather you’re still in Kansas :). Hope all is well.
I’m still hanging for the trip that started in Minnesota.
How about the people that sort of wrinkle their nose? or actually use the word evil?
Vera
July 27th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
,,,Neither, actually.
At the same time, “my (son|brother|nephew|daughter-in-law|second-cousin|neighbor) does that” is a common refrain in any space where most present identify as middle-class. I am thus forced to bite my tongue because “I’m sure they’re very good at what they do, but…” is both too arrogant-sounding and too difficult to explain to a disinterested layman. It’s frustratingly recursive.
At the end of the day, so much of what we’re discussing is a commodity - web sites, computers, networks are really all just commodities.
But like another ubiquitous and accessible commodity - namely the automobile - when something’s not done right, there’s hell to pay. And at the end of the day, one man’s API is another man’s exhaust manifold.
Which is, I believe, where “evil” comes in. Which annoys me. People fear what they don’t understand ‘n allathat. But then I’m the down-to-brass-tacks type who given a slide rule, a box of crayons, a newsprint tablet, and an IBM machine (*snerk*) can still get your site built. (To this day I still do my best writing on a manual typewriter, for goodness’ sake; it’s a much more sensual tool than any computer I’ve ever used.) Nor am I ashamed to admit my belief that people in general ought to be able to get the job done with whatever tools are at hand.
However, computers are presented with so many layers of abstraction that people figure that it doesn’t require effort to do much of anything with them.
July 27th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
“People fear what they don’t understand ‘n allathat.”
That is the heart of it, I believe. Tech is too much like magic to most people. Heck, telephones are still magic to most people. Like electricity and cars, though, they’ve been here long enough that the fear has subsided. After all, neither our fathers or grandfathers were tricked or bitten by tvs, phones or cars. Computers… however…well since the first success of heart transplants, I think, the imaginative range of potential explored so entertainingly in science fiction also became too possible to many.
Plus ca change plus ca la meme chose.
As to family, mine did the same when I worked in real estate! If I’d ever sold houses, or something accessible, they’d have gotten it I suppose, but urban redevelopment? Huh? “…oh, she does something to do with real estate, but I couldn’t tell you what”.
Some of us, it seems, are blessed or doomed to want and try to understand everything.
You could/would build on an IBM machine?!? Cool.
Vera
July 28th, 2007 at 10:04 am
I’d hafta learn Hollerith code and the relevant instruction set. And it’d take a looong time. But I could do it.
Just the way I am, I guess.