Overall, I agree with Dan's point on how much opportunity for
a rich electronic communications environment has been overlooked.
On the other hand, who among us can be sure that there's no
"alternative rich communications universe" embedded in the
shorthand languages of "IM" and "rap?" Where's the Rosetta
Stone that can cross-translate among "Standard English,"
"common idiomatic English," "generally-accepted slang-lish,"
"blended-with-various-ethnic-based-languages English," etc?
Some people can communicate better than others. Woody Guthrie
summarized the main themes and meanings of the film of
Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" in one night, in language
that almost anyone can read and grasp. It probably would
survive the cryptic notation of Instant Messaging, with little
loss of meaning.
(http://www.geocities.com/nashville/3448/tomjoad.html)
It might be possible for someone to get a grant funded that
examines whether or not the common "IM-ing" abbreviation-based
language works better to communicate the records of
contemporary affairs and history across sociocultural groups,
than "Standard American English."
The losses of literacy that Dan points out are more about the
ineffectiveness of public education to bring students to a
useful level of literacy, than about the media and syntax
that's used to transmit recorded culture and history.
________________
Regards,
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices
Daniel Emory wrote:
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
As far as a device that you can comfortably and
safely use in the tub is
concerned, I don't think that paper will be the
delivery method of the
future.
========================
It’s estimated that 40% of the US adult population is
non-literate, which means they don’t read books or
newspapers. This has been accompanied by a rapid
decline in the ability of college students to write a
half-way decent paragraph in English. The California
State College system, the largest in the nation, takes
almost any applicant who got through high-school
degree with half-way decent grades. But about 40% of
its first year students are not capable of doing
college-level work, and thus their first year is
dominated by remedial classes in English, Math and
other subjects they should have mastered in high
school.
These declines all coincide with the growth of the
internet, and the shift from obtaining knowledge from
paper books to learning from feeble snippets of
on-line text. The blogosphere, dominated by those who
are at least competent in the English language,
consists mainly of opinions unsupported by any factual
basis.
When you read tomes from the 1990’s extolling the
promise of hypertext to change the way people think
and use information, (I recommend the
“Hypertext/Hypermedia Handbook by Berk and Devlin),
you begin to realize that it’s promise was still-born.
The hypertext pioneers envisioned a rich panoply of
link types that would create hypertexts which were
true “searchable mazes” Frame Technology, beginning in
FrameMaker 4, added a rich variety of hypertext link
types which would have realized that original vision.
When Adobe took over FrameMaker, it could have carried
out that vision by implementing all of the FrameMaker
link types in PDF. It failed to do so. And so, the
HTML standard, with only the most primitive hypertext
link type, became the standard. There was some hope
that the XML standard would have rich linking
capabilities. It added a few additional link types,
but nowhere near enough to realize the original
promise of hypertext.
The result is that most online help documents are
shovelware. I wrote an article about that, “Thoughts
About On-Line Help”, about 6 years ago. It’s still
available at:
http://www.microtype.com/resources/articles/Oldocs_DE.pdf
Although I would probably add some additional concepts
and ideas if I wrote that article today, I still stand
by most of what’s stated there. In particular, I stand
by my statements in that article about the many
advantages of paper books (or PDFs which faithfully
replicate the format and layout of well-designed paper
books).
Getting back to what I state in the first two
paragraphs above, I maintain that the ability to
acquire in-depth knowledge of a subject is a
discipline which is difficult to master. And I have no
doubt that well-written, well-organized paper books,
particularly on difficult subjects, will continue to
be the best way to acquire real, in-depth knowledge of
a subject, and subsequently serve its owner as a
valuable reference source. If the internet (and other
vehicles of on-line content) continues to serve mainly
to encourage an undiscipplined pseudo-approach to real
learning, it will remain a major cause of rising
non-literacy.
_______________________________________________
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