blah blah
posted by Sean 7:32 PM[edit]
testing again to see if it still works
posted by Sean 7:30 PM[edit]
Testing to see if this still works.
posted by Sean 10:40 AM[edit]
Today, as I was reading Technopoly by Neil Postman, I had a thought. He was talking about the time around the 16h century when a number of writers, philosophers, scientists, etc. started wrriting in their vernaculars rather than in Latin. It occured to me then that I could draw a parallel between the use of the vulgate and the disciplines of usability and information design. Galileo, Bacon, and the others were not dumbing down, as many people still think of plain communication, they were writing in their natural language and, as importantly, the language of the non-specialists arounds them. They believed that the non-specialists around them would understand what they had to say, if given the chance.
Usability and information design actually have an advantage over vernacular languages. When Galileo wrote in Italian, he made his work more accessible to those around him but possibly less accessibile to, say, his peers in Germany or England who read Latin but not Tuscan. Information presented according to good principles of information design, while perhaps not truly universal, will not then becom incomprehensible to the experts for whom non-user-centered systems and documents had been designed in the past.
posted by Sean 9:05 PM[edit]
Here is the website for Brickrose Cottage Bed and Breakfast, which my wife Tiffany and I own.
posted by Sean 12:03 PM[edit]
Here is a more in-depth assortment of essays, articles, and annotated links I've put together.
posted by Sean 12:01 PM[edit]
Here is a more in-depth assortment of essays, articles, and annotated links I've put together.
posted by Sean 12:00 PM[edit]
Yesterday, as I was finishing Things That Make us Smart by Donald A. Norman, I was struck by a couple of references to comic books. Norman writes, "Obviously, some texts are more complex than others -- for instance, look at the difference between comic books and textbooks."
He is right that many comic books are inconsequential. Some, such as David Boring by Daniel Clowes, are serious works of narrative art -- I hesitate to call comics "literature" not because they are less than literature, but because they are something more.
But I think that, in general, the comic book is no less complex than the textbook. The complexity of the comic is merely invisible. The comic book is user-centered; the auteur or team of artists and writers bring words, colors, shapes and an often very sophisticated visual sense of narrative together, channeling complexity into what Norman would call a pure experiential mode.
Textbooks are more likely to be system-centered. Though they purport to be educational materials aimed at giving knowledge to people, they pay more allegience to the information within than to the reader. If people learn from them, that is good. If people actually expericne some kinfd of pleasure, that is a happy and unexpected side effect.
The good thing about this is that the reflective mode enforced by textbooks is good exercise for the mind. The downside is that learning can be more boring and difficult than it need be, and students who remain unengaged are less likely to learn.
Norman is almost right about the simplicity of comic books. In most cases, the reader's response is what is simple, but the comics themseves can be quite complex. Even a simple formulaic comic is a skillful braid of different forms of expression. Whether the complexity of the comic is the creation of the artist or merely the accretion of narrative and illustrative conventions is, ultimately, up to the artist.
posted by Sean 9:12 AM[edit]
Just changed the blog name from "Notes from Underslept," which I thought of on the spur of the moment last night, to "Sinister Dexterity," which I have wanted to use as a title for a long time.
posted by Sean 7:38 AM[edit]
Started thinking about information architecture, looking for information about how to get into the field. It sounds like the way to get into that position is to get into another position in the hierarchy of a company and then work into IA. I hadn't really thought about my writing as an asset for this, but all these people need copy written, so I think that will be the way I might get into it. I found two of the big web companies listed in a builder.com article have Portland offices right downtown, and they use writers and creative types as well as information architects, so I think that's the way to go. I might even do that for a practicum!
posted by Sean 11:33 PM[edit]