edna.edu.au

Language Choices

I am just now having my first real go at growing a beard. And it has plenty of gray highlights so time to tell some of the young folk to get off my lawn. 

I used to connect to the World Wide Web back before it was commercial and before we knew how big a success it would be. I used early builds of Mosaic, a browser that predated Netscape and Internet Explorer. I had to tunnel my connections via modem through University student logins, across campuses and via software I compiled on a server sitting in someones office. Talk about keen.

In my part time job I looked up resources with ancient precursers to the web such as Gopher, FTP, Telnet, Archie, Veronica. I posted on Usenet and downloaded the earliest Linux distributions via FTP. Prior to that there was the BBS scene.

I read some of the language fads amongst the education buzzword herd and given my particular background I feel I should point out some of them are either wrong or sound a bit silly to an old bloke.

Cyber bullying - that would just be bullying wouldn't it?

Cyber cheating - cheating?

Cyber sex - used to be called flirting

Cyber safety - how about "How to deal with strangers and spot potential dangers"

Cyber-anything unless you are referring to Doctor Who or William Gibson novels is a sure sign you don't know what you are talking about.

Second Life - this is a product name for a 3d social game not an actual state of being

IRL - In real life - most of us who work and play on the Internet consider it to be a part of our real life

Online predator - predator will do. If they aren't finding victims online they will do it some other way. At least we can teach kids how to avoid them online and they leave a nice evidence trail.

Information Superhighway - Please. Do. Not. Do. This. Internet is fine.

Ethical Hackers - WTF? The hacker ethic is to deconstruct, understand and make. It values freedom of information above authority. Oh! You meant hackers who are not criminals? That is a bit like introducing a muslim who is not a terrorist. Or a priest who is not a child molester. Slightly loaded don't you think?

Free Software - Not the bloated adware and spyware supported freebie you downloaded. Free with a capital F software is about protecting your freedoms to learn by inspection, learn by modification, and learn by accessing other peoples ideas in turn. Free is good; free means nothing.

Theft - not a word to be used in relation to copyright. Unauthorised copying is fine. You wouldn't steal a porshe would you? But if you could quickly make a copy to try one out without depriving the owner that would be different. Unauthorised copying might deprive the rightholder of revenue. It might make them a new sale. It might be fair use. But it is never theft.

Virtual Learning Environment - learning environment would be fine. What is Virtual Learning anyway? If refering to software learning management system (LMS) or portfolio are fine.

Web2.0 - some people hate this. I am in two minds but I think it can be a bit generic. Would a more specific term such as social networking, crowdsourcing, hosted application or cloud computing be more precise?

That was a quick list. Please comment if you can think of any more.

Tags: cyber super virtual buzzword
Posted at 04:02PM Mar 13, 2009 by Paul Shirren  |  Comments[0]