an impulsive breakout on the terminology used in the virtual session giving me a hard time

Nobody would have ever thought how complex the field of E-communication could be. I mean almost everybody of us uses email-programs, icq, guestbooks, forums and many more internet based communication tools every week, some of us even every day. However, it is like in every scientific field, beyond the user friendly applications are complicated trains of thought and hundreds of thousands technical terms describing apparently simple methods and distinguishing between things which to me are all the same. To illustrate this point, for communication tools such as email, newsgroup and forums I of course know that it takes the guy reading my writing a bit of time to respond to it. In all likelihood he is not sitting in front of his computer waiting for my mail. However, there must be a weird name for that and it is “asynchronous communication”. Of course that name makes sense, it is not my purpose to argue contrary. A “synchronous communication” is quite a proper name for chats or video-conferencing, too. Nevertheless, from the bottom of my head I was not able to answer the question in the virtual session what the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication tools were. So I worked through the answers and then of course I knew the difference. In the following it was a must for me to acquire the fancy vocabulary first, before I could start thinking about the answer to the question. My point is, first of all – why do I have to learn that computer language at all; can we not break down the complexity of the words to its sometimes far simpler concept (here it is just that an email is not replied at the same time it is written) ? Secondly, is this not disencouraging? Too much of the time we deal with the new media are just wasted by remembering (and as fast as we have understood them we forget those words again) complex not even daily vocabulary. So why not just saying smiley to a simple face which is laughing – who the hell had the idea to come up with the blend “emoticon”?! And why is there even a standard in internet slang? I’m not gonna ever use OTOH for “on the other hand” and if I did so – no one would understand me.

Ok so far for that. I definitely know that I am very narrowed in my opinion here and not even give a short glance to the other side – this might sometimes sound a bit dumb; like a blind fanatic who regards only his view on the world:-[ Of course there is another side. In a scientific field you need a common language, so that at least your colleagues know what you are talking about. You cannot always write down half a novel including “the communication tools which take place in real-time when two or more people meet to communicate” in order to explain that you refer to the synchronous ones. And by the way it sounds much smarter and précis when you use the technical terms, of course. Incidentally, I did that too when I called the “emoticon” a blend.

However, I do not intend to get rid of technical terminologies in general (what a nonsense would that be!!!!) but telling that it is not worth implying too many of the computer and internet terms in our teachers training since most of us will not memorize them.