Too Much Tech Slang

Again, I just heard that most annoying technology slang term/phrase of all. It's the "going viral" phrase. That idiotic slang and much more has entered into the mainstream news outlets now and is as common as the "you know" is in non tech slang world. This time I heard "going viral" about a Yu Tube video. A newscaster on my local late night news said that a video had "gone viral". In fact, in recent months his mouth has been going viral while spouting cutsie technological slang. And he is not alone. I hear tech slang every day, read it in the media and might start having nightmares about it tonight.

I know there is no escaping this garbage that masks for English, so I thought today I would throw some of that mess at you (so you can suffer too) in the form of a list of some of my least favorite tech slang. You can put "going viral" at the top of the list, and I do hope you would hate it too. When humans ape slang and over-use it, it seems to cut off some of their cognitive abilities. They use the terms so much that they assume the listener understands what they imply. But this is not so. Language must be precise to best be understood. I think if that newscaster said that the video was " immediately popular", viewers might have greater confidence in his command of the English language, because broadcasters are supposed to speak the language better and with less imprecision that are we the listeners.

Here's ten samples of the more annoying tech slang I hear and read way too much.
* beta- a new product released for testing. I think "new product" is a clearer alternative
* hacker- has come to mean a malicious computer user. I prefer "computer criminal' and perhaps a stretch in prison for them.
* spam- computer junk mail. It would best be identified as what is is "garbage"
* avatar- damn that awful movie that put that term into the trendy geek slang world. How about "icon" instead?
* low bandwidth- This means that the computer session gave little information. How about saying "slow" instead?
* skimming- First we had scamming and now skimming, which is a scam in which thugs steal your credit or debit card numbers with a hidden reading device. "theft" sounds better to me.
* smishing- Think another stupid tech term, "phishing", and apply it to phishing on cell phones rather than computers. So smishing is phishing with cell phones. They used to call that kind of theft tactic "bait and switch'. I think the latter is more descriptive.
* texting- electronic messages. Why not just "message"? Do we have to technological identify the source of every message?
* blog- a journal one posts on line. "Journal" is sufficient.
* screenagers- teenagers who are on line too much. Do we really need a word for that?

Well, after writing that there is one good outcome for you. I am now speechless....