Please tell me if have a good idea what the term means, or if you arent really sure what it means:
Have a good idea | Not really sure | Never heard the term

I would put my own response in the middle, because from what I’ve read, there are three meanings of the term.1
If I was familiar with all three, and confident in my use of each, I might say that I knew the meaning of the term(s). But as it stands, I’m not all that au fait, I have a general idea, and would have said that I’m not really sure what it means. I know enough to know that there’s some variation and ambiguity. But perhaps that means, for Pew purposes, that having a general idea would put me in the ‘I have a good idea’ group. So, because of the history of RSS, the question itself is not amenable to a straightforward answer.

As for knowing what RSS does, and is, that’s another matter. Pew didn’t ask if people knew either of those things, but if the discussion takes in questions about whether people feel comfortable using the new technology, then RSS presents an interesting, difficult example.

An understanding what RSS is, and more importantly, how to use it (at either end) is subject to knowing a variety of other things, such as the nature of XML, distinctions between versions, whether or not it includes Atom and what to do in response to seeing a feed link, particualrly if there isn’t a nifty Livemark icon at the bottom of one’s browser.

In a case like this, I would expect to visit Wikipedia, Whatis, or some other sites and have a quick read, then be on my way in terms of using it myself.2 But in going through the motions, I see that there’s not much ‘how to’ about RSS. There are a lot of discussions about what it is and the variants thereof, but not many on what to do when you see it.

The upshot is that some things are harder to figure out than others, and RSS feeds are among the more complicated, particularly among the terms Pew chose.

1. Note that information sources give differing versions of what the term means. Whatis.com is emphatic, Wikipedia is less so.

2. For this purpose I went to Wikipedia, Whatis, the Guardian RSS page, Googled “what is RSS” and browsed a few of the results. I then Googled “How do I use RSS“, and browsed the DMOZ directory for things that looked relevant. This page gave me answers more quickly than most.

“Maybe… in Bizarro World.”

I have heard teenage kids use ‘iPod’ as a generic term for MP3 players. Why does that strike you as implausible? After all, it has happened with many other brand names (aspirin, kleenex, hoovering, xeroxing, …)

Maybe… in Bizarro World.

Because ‘podcasting’ is shorter and catchier. It is common practice to form compound words out of broadcasting by droppoing the first part of the word ‘simulcasting’ ‘narrowcasting’. Plus, of course, ‘pod’ and ‘broad’ are similar one-syllable words. And because ‘ipod’ seems well on it’s way to becoming a generic name for MP3 players.

In any case, ‘podcasting’ wasn’t selected instead of ‘MP3 broadcasting’ to make the concept more obscure.

Rob: that’s true… I was able to get from the stage of “is RSS edible?” to “hey I wrote a script to generate RSS, w00t!” in just a few days. But the use of new-fangled terms seems to create some sort of barrier in the mind in a way that plain English terms don’t. Utter a magic incantation like “JSP” or “RSS” and many people actually believe it’s some kind of arcane technology that should be left to wizards. Perhaps the divide is really in people’s mindsets.

Supposedly Ben Hammersley, writing in the Guardian, was the first person to coin that term.

“With the benefit of hindsight, it all seems quite obvious. MP3 players, like Apple’s iPod, in many pockets, audio production software cheap or free, and weblogging an established part of the internet; all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio.

But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1145689,00.html

Which seems to show that podcasting has a history of meaning more than just the technical side of it(RSS + enclosures, subscription and asynchronous downloading.)

It’s not a question of whether there is power in knowing what the jargon and acronyms mean—of course there is. The question is whether the computer field uses jargon and acronyms in place of readily-available plain english terms in order to obfuscate. I don’t see any evidence of that. Yes, you can construct an explanation that is clearer than ‘podcasting’ (e.g. ‘broadcasting radio content in MP3 form via downloading to be listened to on an iPod’) but that obviously cannot be the name of the concept.

This means that instead of leveling the playing field, Internet use may contribute to social inequality.

Those who gain knowledge and understanding of these things first are trailblazers; without these early adopters, nobody else would ever get to use these technologies. Ten years ago, relatively few people even knew what the web was, but, lo and behold, this “unequal” situation has balanced itself out.

The playing field is perfectly level, because everyone has access to the knowledge. They simply have free choice in whether they want to access that knowledge and the fact that many people don’t is a sign that it’s just not relevant to their lives (yet).

But on the subject of podcasting, I’d say it is jargon, and not a techical term. Besides the odd Joe, nobody cares about the technical specifics, about how those podcasts end up on their Ipods or computers, people just want to listen to the podcast someone else made.

And I think the Pew poll messes it up a bit by just giving a semi-illiterate technical description for the term.

“Podcasting (audio files that are downloaded from Web sites loaded onto MP3 players such as iPods and played at the convenience of users)”

This would make all of Itunes a podcasting business.

“Distributing a radio show in mp3 format” would probably be a better start for a description.

And even besides “podcasting”, there are many other instances where jargon’s used to obscure rather than describe. The worst offender, I think, is the area of HCI —often many people say they’re doing “usability engineering” when they’re just spouting off pseudo-scientific quasi-religious precepts on How Things Should Be and dressing it all up in nice tables and graphs. (There are people trying to do good work going on in HCI, but it seems the field’s covered so much in manure that it’s hard for a layman to tell shite from shinola.)

Outside of HCI too, you can’t really deny there’s some power in the use of jargon and acronyms. When was the last time a layman was impressed by a person who finally mastered persistent data structures?