atw: Re: Should we give the users what they want?

Christine:
You wrote:

> I have absolutely no doubt that we are going through a paradigm shift.

Yes, just as we did when radio and then TV came, and all those who would only 
have paper and books
said we'll all be rooned, while others said newspapers will continue to rule 
the day, and
all that.      Despite L'Academie Francais  (plus accents) and Canute, language 
and media interests and mixes of each
change, and even "un jean" (a pair of jeans)  is now built into new 
dictionaries.




> I have been
> doing my darnedest to stay in tune with what it is by getting on to Facebook 
> (the value
> of which is now apparent to me) and Twitter (the value of which still eludes 
> me) and
> doing lots of other Web 2.0 things.   I am not doing this to be fashionable, 
> or to
> pretend to be young, but to stay employable and useful into my old age.
>

> I think it is like a major, tectonic plate shifting, earthquake - we have no 
> idea what
> the final new configuration will look like till things stop shifting - all we 
> can do
> for now is keep our balance, and avoid wasting our energy trying to stop the 
> earthquake.
>
[snip]
>
> So the only positive thing I can do is keep myself flexible so that I can 
> adapt readily
> to change and not be overwhelmed by it.  This means I also avoid wasting time 
> trying to
> shore up the "ancien regime" when it is already dead as a dodo.  Any 
> grammatical or
> linguistic rules I apply, I apply because it suits me or my readership, not 
> because it
> is "right".  Right is currently a very rapidly moving target indeed.
>

Sounds sensible to me.   Not much point in relying on any single media format 
as a way of
maintaining would-be "effective" communication if it turns out no one is 
reading much of it
anyway..     The only problem is going to be getting the balance right.     And 
I personally doubt that
relying on say, Wikis to do the while trick is as silly as relying solely on 
paper, and saying all other things are meaningless and barbaric.

> That being said, to my perceptions, a lot of what is happening currently IS 
> asinine,
> but I will allow the possibility that I am the one whose thinking is out of 
> tune with
> the changes.  However, I don't think this IS an age thing.  It's a Zeitgeist 
> thing -
> its just incidental that one person is young and another is old - at these 
> times.
>

Hurrah!  See?  We can agree !
-Peter M
 peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 
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