 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Carol Daniels cad@melbpc.org.au |
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There's no question that computers are changing the way we communicate. It's even reviving the art of letter writing, although sometimes it seems that it's doing so without also improving the overall literacy level at the same time.
Electronic communication is easy, fast and efficient. Sometimes too efficient. At least sometimes seems that the efficiency of the medium overrides all the other communication considerations.
Electronic communication has even introduced a new level of efficiency. All those emoticons (also called smileys) acronyms and initialisms that populate e-mail messages are also creeping into formal writing. Although I do use these space, time and keystroke saving devices in my e-mail messages, I don't advocate using them in other forms of communication.
It's interesting too, how these devices once added spice and individualism to online writing, but now they seem to do the opposite. Then someone adds spectacles, a goatee or a top hat to a standard emoticon, or coins a new version of a standard initialism and livens up the scene.
A week or so ago, I was participating in a teleconference with some of my fellow Association of PC User Group (APCUG) representatives, when the Chair of our group, Judy Lococo--of Louisville, Kentucky--wrote,
"What can I say, WYALLSIWYALLG," which we all immediately knew meant, "What you'all see is what you'all get!
That's the kind of spontaneous originality that e-mail inspires. Of course in a more formal environment it might not have been as well received. It was just right for that particular time and situation.
Another variation on that theme that I've been seeing lately is WYSIWYP, or what you see is what you print. For black text on white paper, printing from desktop publishing or modern high end word processing programs, the distinction between WYSIWYP and WYSIWYG can be small. It wasn't always that way and even today, if you're printing in colour or printing complex graphics, the difference between what you see on screen and what you print, is sometimes visible, by even untrained eyes.
Nevertheless, WYSIWYG is good enough for most of us. It was one of the most liberating developments in the road to modern publishing. Computers and the bells and whistles that accompanied the computer revolution, broke down many barriers to publishing, even print publications, like this one. As many readers already know, the PC Update team makes extensive use of electronic communication in the production of the magazine. It would be very difficult to do it any other way.
In a few minutes I'm going to download a couple of last minute submissions to PC Update, edit them and upload them. Then I'll finish my editorial, and upload that too. So that Peter Smith can do the layout.
Nothing out of the ordinary, really, except that this month I'm writing my editorial from my hotel room in Atlanta Georgia, where I've been attending an APCUG planning meeting. During the meeting various APCUG representatives took notes, checked references, made charts and drew time lines on the fly. Often our work in progress was displayed on a large-screen projector, so we could watch things develop. At the end of each day we had a printed summary of the day's agreements and achievements, along with an updated agenda for the next day. All the technology worked, virtually trouble free.
Not earth shattering I know. In fact, the amazing thing about it was the sheer ordinariness of it all. Even more amazing is the ease with which we publish today, and the variety of formats available to us. Whether you are publishing on disk, CD-ROM, newsgroups, mailing lists, the web, portable document formats - such as Adobe's PDF or Corel's Envoy - or even on plain, old-fashioned paper, things just seem to get easier to do every day.
If you have something to say - and a computer, a word processing, DTP program, HTML know-how, or one of the portable document formatting programs and a printer - there's no excuse for not saying it.
Electronic publications can be nifty, sometimes superior to printed publications. For reference material, if well indexed, with search capabilities, electronic publications can simplify and speed many research tasks. But I don't especially like to read online, and I don't know anyone who does.
So while I believe electronic publications are useful, and will become even more so in the future, I don't see an immediate threat to printed books, newspapers and magazines etc, despite almost daily predictions of the demise of the printed word.
I still prefer printed materials for most things. I print web pages I want to refer to later. I print e-mail messages that contain action items I'm liable to forget. And I print everything I write for editing and proof reading.
I'm not basing that predicting based on my personal preference for printed materials alone. I'm basing it on the ever growing number of books and magazines on the shelves each day. It's funny, but even the number of books extolling the virtues of electronic publishing is growing each day.
One final item on the issue of proof reading
Last month Stan wrote that Ash would be continuing with his proof reading role for PC Update. He won't be, and we do need someone to take on that role. We need someone who has some proof-reading experience, and who is able to commit to being available during the PC Update production period each month. If you are interested please contact me via the BBS or the Internet.
Reprinted from the May 1997 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
