My best worst call ever...

[earl colby pottinger]

Mothers

My mother considers herself to be a well-educated, reasonable person.

She is not a reasonable person, some things need special words because nothing like they were in use before. People who want "elaborate analogies" are fooling themselves that they understand how things work when in fact they don't have a clue.

This just lets them dig themselves into a deeper hole, then the fecal matter really hits the rotary air movement device.

She absolutely will not take my word for it on any piece of technology.

Yep, same for my mom. But I *REFUSE* to help her with anything that she complained that I don't know what I am talking about and had someone else setup. Any problems and I loudly point out that she rejected my help before and I now know *NOTHING* about her present setup. In the end, even with her getting angry with me, I suffer less heartache than when I use to give her free tech service.

[PepperElf]

i'm still wondering exactly what she thought the internet would look like without a computer.... like maybe images directly into her brain...

[earl colby pottinger]

None

i'm still wondering exactly what she thought the internet would look like without a computer.... like maybe images directly into her brain...

I doubt she had any image - she never knew what it was, only that other people had it and raved about how good it was so she must have one also.

Think of those people who buy art that are just meaningless blots or designer fashions that leave welts on one skin after wearing them all day, but people still buy them because of the 'name' of the designer. They have no understanding about what is good or bad about the above but they will by it anyway just to say they have it.

Check out http://www.bornrich.org/ to see what type of junk these people will buy.

[Samaliel]

She is not a reasonable person, some things need special words because nothing like they were in use before. People who want "elaborate analogies" are fooling themselves that they understand how things work when in fact they don't have a clue.

Agreed.

Also, I find far more condescending to use "elaborate analogies" like you're explaining something to a kid than assuming the person in front of you knows at least a little bit about the matter at hand.

Assuming a person knows more than they actually know isn't condescending. It may be rude if they previously clearly stated they didn't know enough to understand your technical speech.

Granted, there is such a thing as "jargon", as opposed to actual technical speech, and one should try not to use it when talking to someone who is obviously not computer savvy. But a modem is a modem. A hard-drive is a hard-drive. Calling things by their actual names isn't "jargon".

Jargon would be shorthands you'd use with colleagues or other people educated on this topic. While "kay-bee-pee-ess" is jargon, kilobit per second isn't. This is the unit used to measure the speed of data transmission and it has no other name. But you don't necessarily need to get into that much details.

Or maybe you just poorly chose your examples.