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Subject:Re: What is our art? From:Rev Simon Rumble <simon -at- rumble -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 20 Feb 2002 10:24:13 +0000
On Tue 19 Feb, John Posada bloviated thus:
> I tell people I'm the "idiot's advocate". I explain things to the
> idiot that the smart people already know. I used this just yesterday.
While this is amusing and makes a good sound bite, I'm not a fan of
this explanation. It has a nasty habit of becoming the way you view
your readers.
I get really annoyed with the "For Dummies" style of thinking. The
technical books I read (almost invariably O'Reilly books) are books
designed "for smart people who don't know anything about the subject
matter". These are also the types of manuals I write. Of course it
doesn't help that the "For Dummies" books are so full of fluff that
you could halve the page count and not lose any useful information.
My audience is people in the broadcasting industry, in various areas.
They tend to know really well what they do day-to-day. But what they
do isn't necessarily computer technical: they might know their NTSC
from their SECAM and their MPEG1 from their MPEG2 but the computer for
them is just a tool.
--
Rev Simon Rumble <simon -at- rumble -dot- net>
www.rumble.net
It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's
a depression when you lose yours.
- Harry S. Truman
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