I knew that my understanding of computers and software often doesn’t make it easier to talk to family, friends and other people about such stuff. But I had no idea, how different the semantics of even very basic concepts can be.
I could think of surveys for words such as: Operating system, application, “Google”, file, disk, “Office/Word” - or even more advanced for Desktop, partition, disk image and zip file vs. folder and disks, resolution vs. DPI, TIFF vs. PDF, Dock/Start Menu vs. /Applications and C:\Programs, Explorer vs. “My Computer”, Wi-Fi vs. DSL vs. network vs. internet vs. the web vs. “Google”.
I will found a chair for “Semantics of computer nomenclature and social preconceptions” for some fundamental research and force schools to invite geeks and nerds to speak at least once a week to class about VPN tunnels, Unicode and the difference between a browser and a search engine.
