The art of tech confusion

This column is part of a series "Making It Personal" that explores our love/hate relationship with personal technology.



In the technology industry, things going on in the outside world tend to be forgotten. People don't know what the difference between 1080i and 1080p is? No problem. The vast majority of people are confused about Blu-ray? Who cares.

And it's this attitude that has perpetuated the belief that this industry is difficult to understand and "things are way over our heads." But why is that? Why should things be over the average person's head when it basically boils down to the differences in products that are used on a daily basis in the office and at home? Simply put, why are product descriptions so confusing? Is it intentional? You better believe it.

Let's face it - there's simply no reason why companies would go out of their way to include tech jargon in their discussion of the viability of a product other than to confuse people enough to force them into buying the device because of higher numbers or a seemingly bigger feature.

How many times has a family member asked you what the difference is between Intel's Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz processor and the company's Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz processor? More than likely, your response was, "well, nothing really. Buy whichever one is cheaper because any difference in speed you probably won't even witness." Sure, some may say that it's important Intel throws in the speed of its processor on the chip's information and Pioneer will say that telling people that a specific HDTV is 1080p and not 720p is necessary, but I'm not so quick to agree. Does it help differentiate products? Sure. But shouldn't there be a better way to inform the public without confusing them on something that shouldn't be confusing at all?

Of course, if you asked most companies in this industry, the answer would be a hearty "no." Why would Sony and the rest want to make things easier for the average person? If things were easier to understand, people would be buying the best product in their price range every time and most companies would be forced to change the way they do business. After all, if people understand what it is that they're buying, won't they be more inclined to make the right decision?

The barriers to entry in this business are still far too high and it goes beyond a discussion on processors and HDTVs. The average person who doesn't have a love for technology or an IT background doesn't know the difference between 8-megapixels and 10-megapixels or how a 2x optical zoom impacts a picture. Instead, they're given all that information and expected to know better. Or are they?

As the art of tech confusion continues, it seems to get worse. Some may attribute this to technology becoming more complicated, but I think that's ridiculous. If you take an objective look at what's really going on, it's plain to see that companies keep technology confusing because they know that if they simplified their descriptions, sales would drop and transfer to competitors.

The current state of the technology industry dictates that those who buy technology and know what tech jargon means will make the right decisions, while those that don't, will not.

Let's face it - there are a number of other specs that are far more important than megapixels when buying a digital camera, but instead of mentioning those prominently, companies consistently tell you how many megapixels a particular camera sports instead.

You can bet that their decision to do this is the result of thousands of dollars worth of research that tells them that the majority of suckers buying digital cameras will purchase based on the number of megapixels irrespective of a product's other features.

But just because it works, it certainly doesn't make it right. In an environment where this industry already gets a bad rap for being too confusing and too difficult to understand, it's the largest companies that we should expect to lead the charge in making things easier, not making things harder.

Confusion is running rampant in the tech industry and there's no reason for it. I don't need numbers or other gibberish to tell me about a product, I simply want companies to give it a pithy name and make the specs available to me so I can see what it offers in simple form.

Is that too much to ask? Sheesh.