The Long Terms
It's hard to understand any technology if you don't understand it's language. As with any field of specialization, the insiders seem to speak a secret language, where not the nuance but even the day to day terms sound like ancient Sumerian (whatever that sounded like) to the average person. Because digital technology is ubiquitous, we've all had to learn some of the terms, but sometimes when you're using techspeak you'll catch an eyeroll or smirk from someone who really knows what the words mean. In fact, though, the terms used by professionals in any world can be adopted by others, and end up meaning something altogether different or irreverent. And the technologies themselves will often spread a new words or the use of a word or phrase that needs a way to express the new situation. Think of "on hold." Telephones hadn't been around all that long in the 1960s when the idea of being left "on hold" to wait until someone could "pick u...