I got to thinking about this a few days ago when I was watching television. A commercial came on for Yahoo DSL. The commercial was pretty ordinary - some asshole standing in front of a computer and talking. At the end, the guy in the commerical says "No more waiting for the Internet to load!"

That's not a correct statement. It sounds like nit-picking. Hell, it IS nit-picking. You could never, ever, ever load the Internet. You load a webpage. You load a file. The Internet is so vast I can barely fathom it, yet you're going to load it all into your desktop?

Why does that piss me off so much? For one, Yahoo is a major technology company. They shouldn't be perpetuating incorrect terminology. My main point is that terminology is the first step in understanding things. Perpetuating incorrect terminology is the same as perpetuating ignorance.

For the most part, people don't understand the distributed nature of the Internet. I can't count the number of times I've heard someone say "The Internet (sometimes they say "my Internet") is slow. But the Internet ISN'T slow. The Internet is nothing more than a network of computers. For the most part, they don't give a damn if you're getting an e-mail, reading a webpage, or listening to an MP3. There are computers that don't do anything besides route traffic around to other routers, which in turn route traffic to the computer that stores the webpage that you are requesting. It takes either a lot of audacity or a lot of ignorance to proclaim that the Internet is slow.

I'm not making my point very well here. Let's suppose that since the beginning of time car manufacturers covered every mechanical part of the car with black plastic. Everything under the black plastic they called "the engine" because it's a lot easier than explaining to people about alternators, batteries, radiators, brakes and pistons.

Then let's suppose that you leave your headlights on all night. Why won't your car start? There's obviously something wrong with the engine. What happens when a fuse blows and the turn signals won't work? Engine. You now have no capacity to help yourself. You do not understand anything behind the black plastic and it's all some confusing mystery and you have to run to someone else for every small issue. If you knew there was a battery or a fuse you might be able to fix it but since you don't see it and you don't know what it's called and you have no way of relating it to anything else you have no idea where to even start.

The same thing goes for computer terminology. Have you ever met someone who thinks the monitor IS the computer? The first thing you have to explain to them is that monitor just displays the picture. The real action happens in the box. Real understanding comes from knowing what parts make up the whole. Then you can usually figure out how the parts make up systems and how the systems interact with other systems.

The perfect example is your home theater setup. There is nothing complicated about setting up a home theater system. You have two directions (In and Out) and two signals (video and audio). The thing looks like a horribly complicated mess of boxes and wires but really you're just dealing with in and out, video and audio. If you just called it all a TV how in the fuck would you get it all hooked together? You wouldn't; you'd pay someone to do it for you.