Back to the Fire

We took words from the fire. Wrestled them free, breathing deep of smoke and cinder. Burned, we took them, and made them tools. Put them back in the flames, beat them with hammers, bent them with tongs, turned them from simple names to complex, powerful instruments that cut, that heal, that separate us and bind us.

The fire is still in the words, hiding, biding, waiting for the moment when the universe unfolds just so to remind us of their power.

Burning is pain, and release, and cleansing. Purification of the earliest kind, our oldest trial. We have refined all of this, into simple combinations of symbol and sound, roll them off our tongues and tumble us together. Currents of words, words become water and wine, pulling us into worlds we cannot know any other way. The burning is still there, still moves us, but no longer do we dwindle within them.

This is my altar, built of the fire, dedicated to the flame. Every moment of every day is seeking the next word, the next sacrifice, the next offering to place on the altar. Forever it feeds, forever it takes and returns a thousand-fold what I leave.

The Cluttersphere

The Persuaders episode on Frontline missed a crucial question. Advertising is filling the mindspace available, and crowding out everything else. It has taken over movies, TV, the internet, the mail, newspapers, every medium with which we interact. We are swimming in the stuff, allowed to pay attention to little else.

So, what does that mean for people and organizations that have messages that are not commercial in nature? Messages that need to be heard, information that the average person really does need to have.

They don't get heard, that's what happens.

There is so much competition for our attention that those who have rational, reasonable things to say get drowned out. In order to get heard, they have to resort to marketing, in one form or another. And thus is credibility lost. The message gets lost in its attempt to work within the medium.

Take a scientific discussion of global warming. A few studies are done, and published in scientific journals. The scientific community responds by calling for more study, and trying to make some people outside the community of the potential dangers. A fine start. But people don't pay a whole lot of attention to the scientific community. Have you ever read a physics journal?

And so, in an attempt to make people aware, more sensationalist message go out. And more. It gets picked up by people whose job it is to alarm people (aka The Media and The Government). They don't take time to develop a rational understanding of the issue, they just grab hold of dire predictions and magnify them. Real data, real information, valid warnings and predictions get set aside because the predictions are made to sound as bad as possible in order to sell airtime or get votes.

Imagine the frustration that scientists must feel. They are responding to the situation in what they feel are appropriate ways. But the message gets away from them. Things are said by media and political figures as if they were fact, and then the debate centers on those inaccurate statements as though they were the original message.

And all because there is so much clutter that the scientists had to yell more loudly than they should have to get any attention at all.

That is the ultimate loss we face from The Persuaders, the ability to communicate clearly and appropriately.

I think what strikes me most about the technical and professional writing is how much time and effort goes into professional documents. I'm looking through a benefits summary for my employee insurance packet. It contains the phrase "Member Co-Payments do not accumulate towards the Out-of-pocket Maximum."

Someone, more likely several someones, thought about that sentence. They spent hours trying to come up with the clearest, simplest way of saying that your copays don't count towards how much you've put out during the year. And then, they had to run it past the lawyers, to make sure there was no liability potential in the phrase.

Further than that, though. Think about Google. I am dead certain that there is at least one person who works there whose only job is to think about that one word. About how it can be improved, in whatever sense, about how that logo, that millions of people see every minute of every day, can be changed. And changed in a way that improves their image without diluting it.

That person knows that logo. Knows every pixel. Thinks about it while on vacation. Sees it burning in the night behind eyelids closed in sleep. All that effort, just to extract the maximum possible value out of six letters.

If you want some idea of how hard this is to do, try this writing exercise. Your task is to write a story with exactly fifty words. It must have a beginning, middle and end. It must be a valid story. And it cannot have any more or less than fifty words. Now do that every day, for a paycheck. Tell me that's not hard work.

Online Collaboration Tool - That WORKS!

I have tried using Google Docs a couple of times for various classes. I have had serious problems, including lost data, unpredictable formatting and problems getting Google Docs to accept graphics files embedded in a Word document.

My DTC 478 instructor, John Barber, seconded a recommendation from another student in that class for something called Dropbox. He is correct, it is a great tool. It doesn't do anything but file sharing, so there are no online editors to deal with, and it does the file sharing extremely well.

First, go to www.dropbox.com. You will be presented with a video and a big download button. The video does provide some good basic information, and most of what you'll need to get started. After watching the video, download the software.

Download and setup is quick and easy. If you haven't already created an account with them, you will be prompted to do so during install. If you are setting up the account to access a folder that someone else wants to share with you, make sure you set up your account with the same e-mail address they used for sharing the folder.

Once the software is installed on your machine, there will be a folder on your computer called Dropbox. To access it, just start the Dropbox program from the icon provided or from the All Programs menu. The folder will open up on your desktop, with all of the folders to which you have access included.

Follow the instructions on the site (a little hard to find, at first) to create a shared folder and invite people to use it.

Once you have access to the folder, anything you save to the Dropbox folder on your computer will upload to Dropbox's servers. The folder will sync with the server every few minutes, downloading new documents (or deleting them) automatically.

You can also access the folder via web browser. Just go to the Dropbox site, log in, and your folders will appear. So no need to worry about having access if you're away from your computer. I have been very pleased with this software/service over the last week I have been using it.

Review of Meadow's Technical Re-write

It has been interesting to read other people's re-write of the miserably awful instructions we were given in class. All of those I have read are miles better than the originals. Kudos to you all for deciphering such an example of engineerese.

I will comment on Meadow Nelson's re-write because she has chosen to use screenshots to enhance the instructions. What's more, she has used them effectively. I have seen too many documents filled to the brim with big pictures that don't help. Meadow's use of these graphics is tight, relevant and useful.

Furthermore, her language was clear, such as "This will bring up a drop-down menu" and "A popup box will appear". Minor details that help keep the reader from becoming lost.

There were a few things I would suggest changes to, however. In a few places where the language needs to be re-thought. The phrase "User system is on Windows 95 platform" might be clearer written as "User's computer is running Windows 95". Also, the formatting makes it difficult at times to spot the next step. More use of white space would probably clear up this issue (most easily seen at step 3).

I would also like to mention Karina's and Daniel Stortz's take on this. They both used a very effective method of pointing out vital information. They bolded certain terms to make them stand out. That makes the document much more readable.

Michael Sasser

Under the microscope

I have recently begun building a web presence. Ultimately, I will have pages on various social networking sites, membership in professional networks, a personal web page, at least one blog (beyond this one), and other possibilities I am only beginning to consider.

The current term attached to this kind of web presencing is 'Personal Branding'. Before broadband hit the home, very few people knew how to follow your activities online. And most of your life was lived offline, anyway. Now? Anyone with sufficient time and determination can find out just about anything you do online, unless you are a better hacker than they are.

That includes everything you might be doing while connected to some part of the telecom network (which contains the Internet, for the most part). That includes who you text, call, e-mail, IM, what you tweet, what sites you log into, what media you stream and download, every communication you have ever undertaken online.

Think about that for a moment. The article I would like to discuss made it clear to me how far this has gone.

I received a link to this article from LinkedIn. It talks about how HR people in companies you are applying to for jobs are checking you out. The link is here.

The tone of the article is surprisingly neutral, given that the message is quite chilling. The initial paragraph uses the very pointed phrase 'come back to haunt you'. However, the rest of the article is pitched more at providing basic information rather than continuing the scare.

It is interesting to note that the article states quite clearly that the author disapproves of this practice. He says that the people surveyed 'think they are justified' in searching out information on applicants online. This directly implies that the author disagrees with their assessment.

The graphic to the right of the title is taken from George Orwell's classic '1984'. Big Brother has become a ubiquitous term since the beginning of online lives. Anyone who has read '1984' finds this truly a chilling reference. Or would have, before it became an almost meaningless meme.

The tone in the later parts of the article have more to do with the author's disbelief that people think they are not being watched. He references 'how few job seekers are aware of their personal brands', soon followed by a very short sentence 'It's crazy.' His final comment in that paragraph uses the word 'surveillance'. There are few things quite as disturbing as the thought that we are not only being watched, but judged, as well. Nobody is surveilled who is thought to be innocent, after all.

Overall, the language is not directly intended to frighten. It seems more of a 'why aren't you paying attention?' type of piece.

What strikes me is the next obvious step. Soon, job seekers are going to start checking out employees and managers at companies they apply to. It will be interesting to see whether or not the corporations put up with that.

Rhetoric Past and Future

Rhetoric is a word with a great deal of history behind it. Even before it was something that people began to study, it was used. We have called it argument, or persuasion, or even the fundamental language of learning. During some parts of history, it was considered the noblest of pursuits. Today, the phrase ‘mere rhetoric’ implies that the use of persuasive words has become something unclean.

The twentieth century saw exercises in rhetoric on a global scale. World War II was defined, not by weapons and the bomb, but by the rhetoric of Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler and Stalin. They led their peoples not by being individual soldiers, but by speaking. It was through words that Germany rose up, it was through words that the British resisted for so long. It was through words that Roosevelt was able to turn a shaken and frightened country into the juggernaut that finally ended that war.

But there were others, in the twentieth, and we should not forget them. Ghandi, whose only weapons were words. Einstein, who tried so hard to stop the building of the device he created, and who had so much to say on the nature of peace afterwords. And there was Mao, with his little red book full of words, persuading a people to turn their backs on three thousand years of cultural history.

And others. People we now call marketers, and advertising consultants. People who have learned how to use words to polarize, and divide. People who have learned how to make simple debate impossible by requiring shades of only black and white. Politicians and car salesmen, copy writers and philosophers, the death of journalism, and the coming of the Internet.

Science fiction writers have long summoned visions of what the future might be like. Rocket cars and food pills, and a thousand other treats of the imagination. What they did not see was the coming of the word to every desktop, to every home, to every person walking down the street. We now have access to each other, and to each other’s rhetoric. We cover the world in persuasion towards this point of philosophy or that. We have the ability to communicate, not nation to nation, or statesman to ambassador, but person to person.

Rhetoric is about to come back into its own, or it will be lost forever in a sea of trolls and flamewars. The ability to persuade is once again the greatest skill we can pursue. In order to be heard, we must be exceptional. In order to change the world, we must shout, but clearly and convincingly. Words are the currency of today, and they are both cheap and expensive.


Michael Sasser

From the Fire

Words come from the fire. Old men in Old days sitting before the roasting pig chanting syllables into the smoke. He sought to keep the spirits away, or near, as was his belief.

His descendants began to name things. To name a thing is to have power over that thing, many systems of belief say. We named each other, and the parts of the world. We named the sky, and the lightning, and our children.

From these words came places. Places we had never seen and might see only after our deaths. Sky realms and underground, in the waters and on the breezes. And the world grew under our words.

And now we name the dark places we all know. The hardness inside, and the subtle tortures we inflict. All of these things have names, and the words we use become more than they were.

What once were nameless chants on the savanna now encompass us. The stories we tell have become what and who we are. Religion, politics, science, education, all of these things attempt to describe what we know to be, and what we hope or fear may happen.

To write these stories, one must know the world. Not in its entirety, but in its details. We must see the light and the darkness, the pain and the joy, that come from every place and every time. They loved their children on the savanna, and made stories to teach the ways of the world.

We love our children now, and tell them what stories we believe reflect the world. We write new stories, hoping to find even more in them. More about ourselves and more about everyone else.

Stories are one of the few universal things. We tell stories out of instinct, out of that desire to show who we are, and to understand it ourselves.

I write to know. To understand. To become. There are no other reasons.