Terminology
The Slashdot level of user tends to heckle the use of “the Internet is down” or “my Internet is down” as being ignorant of the mechanisms through which all this magic works. Yes, one can avoid this situation by using something to the effect of “my uplink is down” (despite the linguistic dido involved), or “my internet connection is down.”
Personally, I don’t have a big problem with the use of the “my Internet is down.” “The Internet is down” goes a bit too far for my taste.
I think being this pedantic is precarious. Consider the example:
“My hot water is down.”
“No, idiot. It’s your hot water HEATER that is down.”
The problem here is that it may not be your water heater. It may, in fact, be the natural gas line, or some problem with piping (valves, faucets, etc.). It could be that someone else is using the hot water elsewhere in the building. But now you’ve created a monster, as everyone might start blaming their hot water heater in order to appear competent and in-the-know.
Selecting terminology based on the user’s perspective (even with concepts such as a sunrise), serves the language and the people well enough to permit some standing problems with precision.
Terminology-wise, we have seen a similar situation with the whole computer case debacle. We had people calling their “boxen” (to be 1337 about it) “hard drives,” which is hard-pressed not to rankle the disposition of the hardware guy.
As an aside, perhaps this became prevalent due to the hard drive activity light being the only continuously-operational varying indicator on the front face of a computer?
Anyway, I have noticed a trend of referring to the “box” as a “CPU,” which – to me – is more justifiable due to the heaping stack of informative “What is a computer?” diagrams out there that essentially promote this behavior. While technically incorrect, it won’t make me shift in my seat as badly because, at a “thar she blows” arms-length vantage point, the “box” is the unit of central processing.
If you run servers or use a KVM switch at any time, you quickly realize that a computer doesn’t really include a monitor or input devices. These, all together, might best be called a “desktop computer kit.” It’s basically safe to call a computer a “computer,” unless you run into scope ambiguity.
This scope ambiguity leads me to conclude that hobbyists should call computer cases and their accompanying contents “boxes” (“boxen,” despite my jest, is tired at this point), and IT/corporate types should call them “machines.” Neutral people should match their terminology to their audience on a best-fit basis.
Calling a computer a “box” is affectionate down-talk, somewhat like calling a grown cat a “kitty.” “Machine” invokes exactly what it should: is a mouse a machine? Is an LCD a machine? Not really.
As an additional aside, I’ve noticed something watching a certain set of people shop for computers at big box retailers. This set is the group of people just above the “how much does one of those computer things cost?” level of competence. They measure the entire capability of the system in gigabytes of hard drive space. This is funny because, aside from a new digital camcorder person, the capability to produce large quantities of data is a function of competence, for low values of competence.
Nowadays, I think low-end computers should be rated on the basis of how much crapware they “feature” on first boot. The ability to buy oneself out of said crapware would be a great upgrade. Heck, you could even feature some sort of activation code that determines what gets installed via script on first boot.
Anyway, the reason for all this blathering is that the Internet is down here (ha!) and it got me thinking. This is a stunningly quiet day at work, and I’m fairly ahead on things. It’s a good chance to take things slow and think about projects that can get done before the end of next week.
[This post was composed in MS Word, but I used 10pt Tahoma to make it feel cooler.]