Survey outs Britain as nation of tech twits One in 20 Britons think Steve Jobs is a Division II footballer, six per cent think a virtual hard disk (VHD) is a sexually transmitted disease, and 10 per cent believe a wireless dongle to be a sex toy. Perhaps that last bit is true in a pinch, but it's hard to fathom how Apple's CEO could be mistaken for the redoubtable Steve …
That doesn't surprise me; the last time that i made an impromptu survey of the local pub, ID cards were thought to be a good idea.
It all depends where you do the survey. Online, you're bound to get a bunch with at least a little tech knowledge; those that know their mouse from their elbow.
In the middle of a street/pub/local fish market; the demographic can change.
Paris, because...well I'm sure she knows how to double click her mouse.
I finally understand! Any good comedian needs a good straight man.
All they need to do is post an ad: "Wanted. Solid, sensible executive type to say boring, sensible things while the CEO makes bad jokes and hams it up for laughs. Must be able to keep a straight face when covered in custard. MBA preferred.".
There's supposed to be a set of classifications that they can use to classify everyone they survey and so x-ref them into a representative sample of the population. If they manage to get enough people stuffed into the appropriate categories, then they can claim that the sample is representative and so extrapolate the results to the general population.
Personally, I am of the opinion that this size of sample is way too small and that the classifications aren't up to the job these days. However, I've only got a First in Statistics, so what do I know?
>Nine per cent of respondents believe Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the head of MI5.
Damn the secret is out.
>Another five per cent identified Sir Tim as the first British astronaut in space.
You're thinking of Sir Terrence Lambert-Simnel
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/British_Moon-landing
>Six per cent think phishing is "an angling method used by Eskimos."
Obviously the eskimos moved to Nigeria because the ice melted
>Six per cent believe SaaS (software as a service) was an '80s pop band.
And Kraftwerk is a web framework
>Eleven per cent couldn't name a single social-networking website.
Good - thats a big vote for the inteligence of the British public,
>Three per cent identified Bill Gates as an American comedian.
It's just sysadmins don't get the joke.
One can speculate I suppose, but it is made up and not technically accurate.
Right off to see what people think is a virtual hard drive: a ram disk, 'hard' should not be in there it should be a 'virtual drive', and haven't they heard of tmpfs.
The real problem is those asking the questions don't really know about technology themselves blundering through creating mayhem in their ill educated wake.
The problem is it doesn't make interjections like "Oh, I say!", compliments like "Good show!", or complete sentences with "What!" and "Don't yer know!" In the absence of all that, what else are they supposed to think? Hawking only has himself to blame, not even wearing a bowler hat!
Bill Gates IS and American Comedian!
How did this survey control for people that deliberately put 'wrong' answers for fun in the full knowledge that it's not important at all? - So they can have a bit of fun. Lots of people do that in surveys all the time. It's good to know what they're surveying without giving any useful info. That means doing the survey and putting down a load of bollocks. The Phishing one is another joke. Unless they're interviewing people that don't use the web. Which would be somewhat pointless. Why would they need to know what a social networking site was? It's like expecting a non-phone user to know how to multi-touch a particular model (of phone).
It would be helpful wouldn't it if the survey questioners knew the correct answers.
SaaS? That is what I have on my quarter pounder, Reggae Reggae SaaS.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee if you recall boldly went on the Enterprise meeting all sorts of new life forms with American accents..
A VHD is one that yo pay for but never in fact receive.
Bill Gates - wrong again; he became the richest man in the world by becoming irreplaceable as the voice of Kermit the Frog.
Anyhow what's this got to do with playing computer games or am I missing something here?
It's equally as bad on this side of the pond. And everywhere else on this dampish rock[1]. People, as a race, are for the most part ineducable.
And I'm glad to read that I'm not the only one who lies on surveys :-)
[1] Well, I haven't been to Antarctica (yet); somehow I suspect the education level and technical ability down there is a little different than a random sample anywhere else ...
That said, I Googled "Closer" magazine and browsed the site. "Danielle Lloyd", who? I've heard of Holly Willoughby, but on the other hand, who do I want to leave the CBB house? What?
Oh, right, Celebrity Big Brother, yes? <clicky clicky - c4/bigbro site> Until now (evidently day 13) I had _no_ idea who was in the... what the f....? That's the bloke from Lock Stock &, yes? And hairpiece-Trump's Ex, yes? Haha! In the photo-mosiac, "Katia" looks sweet, but apart from Vinny/Ivana, who the hell are the rest of them?
Point is - the public, all 1000 of them (!), probably don't care who Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are. Given the odd thoughts of what "phishing" means, I'd be interested to know if this was a free-form quiz or a set of "tick the answer you think is most likely" (could El Reg find out?). As for VHDs (what, nobody thought it was a television music channel!?), I know a lot of geeks that call them "images", the VHD terminology being mostly absent. Myself included. Then you aren't tied to pointless restrictions. You can have CD images, disc images, DVD images, floppy images, ghostly images, p()rnographic images <smirk>, the list goes on...
Not able to name a social networking site? I bet a fair few people know *of* Twitter and FaceBook (et al) even if they aren't exactly certain what the point is, or that they are classified as "social networking". I never Twitter but I have a MySpace. I never think "I'm going to network socially". These are just buzz-terms.
Try some better questions:
How often do you check your mail? [every 10 mins, automated]
How often do you Twitter? [never]
How often do you blog? [when I feel like it!]
Your favourite website? [by time spent, this one! :-)]
You start asking "techie" questions, like "what sort of router to you have?" people will be all "WTF?" because we fellow geeks probably installed it ourselves. How many of Joe Public had a man turn up from BT/NTL, plug it in, it works, they've not touched it since or ever wondered what the blinky lights are for...
Seriously... VHD? Why does 99% of the population even _need_ to know what that is?
Paris, for if she was in the BB house, I suspect El Reg would be strangely silent...
After 125 years of the automobile, how many of us can fix our own car from base to top? I know i can't! I can put stuff in the right holes, check the bits I am supposed to check, tyres, lights, etc, but other than that I pay someone else to do that.
I was going up the escalator at a well known tube station the other day and I overheard these two old dears, late 50s, shopping trolleys, the works, bother were talking about the wireless router one of them had just bought, talking about the difference between WEP and WPA, setting up MAC addresses and ensuring DHCP was off, all the good stuff. I was utterly engrossed in how much knowledge that had for people from a generation often written off as having no tech knowledge.
My old man, almost in his 70s, still fixes his own machines when required, so not everyone is a complete muppet, surveying 1,000 people out of 60 odd million is not that representative is it?
This "survey" shows nothing useful at all. If you confront people with a multiple choice list and they either don't know or don't care about the answer, they will select one of the choices maybe at random. So if you neither know nor care who Tim B-L is then you just pick one of the alternatives - which may well be "Head of MI5". If you allowed a "don't know" alternative AND people took the survey seriously, I doubt if you would get so many silly headlines. But then the PR company wouldn't achieve its objectives and the thing wouldn't be done.
... and it's not very impressive is it. 97% didn't think Bill Gates was an American Comedian etc.
So all we have is confirmation of the previously well known fact that a small minority of people get things laughably wrong, and often not unreasonably so, or deliberately. Give a ridiculous choice to select from on a subject which some people are unfamiliar with and someone will select that answer.
How many initially thought The Falklands was off Scotland's coast ? How many still do ?
A VHD? Thats a Volumetric Haptic Display, I thought that would have been obvious, or did the researchers not realise that there is more than one answer to their questions?
I gather much of it was multi choice, given the unnerving silly answers. anyone filling out a technology survey with non tech answers is a joker
Giant who cares, frankly. So the general public can't pick the names of CEOs and notable engineers from our industry out and don't know obscure acronyms; how would the IT crowd do at identifying famous people and technical terms from, say, the legal or road engineering.
Slow news day was it?
I think we can safely assume that this was a multiple choice survey with ridiculous answers to ensure that those that; don't care, think its funny or occasionally don't know ,will pick them. Thus 1 in 20 believe Steve Jobs played division 2 football...no, they don't.
Still at least 25% of people did not recognise Sir Tim Berners Lee as the founder of the internet - because he wasn't. Shame on the other 75% though, but what can they do when there is no correct answer?
Surveys, bah!
Who gives a flying monkey who the CEO of a large company is outside of those in the industry? Are people who buy TVs expected to know the name of the head of Sony? Are people who buy music expected to give a shit about the model of mixing desk used in the studio? Do people who drink wine care about the name of the guy who invented the latest bottling process?
Of course not. It's pointless nonsense and I'm glad the British public have more important things to concern themselves with. I just wish that "more important" thing wasn't what's happening in Eastenders.
As has been pointed out, VHD is term not often used -- and it's not entirely free of ambiguity when you consider tmpfs and other RAM disks.
As for SaaS -- that's just a term used by management, surely?
The you get onto the CEOs -- how does it help me to set up, configure and administer a Windows domain to know who Bill; Gates is, for example?
That's definitely a bit of management speak - I've been working in IT support for seven years and never heard it. And that's working at BT, where management completely *push the envelope* in terms of using the latest buzzwords & TLAs. (Three Letter Abbreviations, for the uninitiated.)
Definitely seems that the surveyors themselves had no idea about the subject.
89% of us know at least one social networking site, that seems pretty switched on for the general Joe public tbh.
The other information expected of them, tells me more about the people asking the questions than those that answered (out of touch bunch of hypergeeks that actually put importance in obscure acronyms and trendy buzzwords).
Oh. It's not 1 April after all.
Why give this risible rubbish the oxygen of publicity? Until now, I'd never heard of Lewis PR (which, it seems, is a "Global Public Relations Agency, offering SEO and Social Media PR"), Now I have. But I didn't want to.
My advice to the compilers of the survey (and to so-called search 'optimising' businesses) could be summed up as "Why don't you either just FOAD or get a proper job doing something that's actually of use to society, you parasitic leeching wankers."
Anyway, who the hell does Tim Berners-Lee play for?
If they were a 80's band, I reckon they'd be pretty cool, lots of synths and drum machines, male lead singer with emo-ish hair looking all depressed, a Yorkshire ripper look-a-like playing the Mini-Moog, yeah, SaaS (Software as a Service) were pretty hot s**t back in the day!
My favourite songs of theirs are "Tainted Disk" and "Just cant get an IP" ;o)
Lets face it the only tech terms in general use come from Star Trek or Dr Who. No one knows all the jargon. Yet most people will have a passing knowledge of a sonic screwdriver. How many techies have a clue what a MBO is or DREEAM (apart from wet ones). It all depends on your field. Jargon is what jargon makers make it and the devil take the hindmost.
Do you (the news media in general) give space to these surveys? If they bothered to interview a significant number of people then fair enough, but a sample of 1000 represents something like 0.002% of the adult population. What's the point? It's not statistically significant so the survey tells us sweet FA.
The companies performing these surveys tell us that they can perform clever profiling in order to get meaningful results from a very small sample. However I think we can draw the conclusion that this is some pseudo mathmatical BS that statisticians feed their clients in order to (a) be taken seriously and (b) get the contract in the first place. (a) of course covers the media. (b) is more important. Imagine that you as a company or government department want a survey performing, one company tells you they need to survey 50,000 people to get a meaningful result while another company tells you they can achieve the same with a survey of only 1,000 people. Who is going to get the job?
If you don't believe any branch of maths or science could be that corrupt consider that the highly respected (ahem!) science of climateology expects us to believe that we can record and predict worldwide temperatures from core samples of only twelve trees for the entire planet. And of course those twelve trees have been very carefully selected to give representative results. I mean, nobody would be so cynical as to suggest that those twelve trees were selected in order to give the results they wanted, would they?
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