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RE: RE : More usage: "Open" or "Access" web addresses
Subject:RE: RE : More usage: "Open" or "Access" web addresses From:"Leonard C. Porrello" <Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- SoleraTec -dot- com> To:"Techwr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:51:43 -0700
Exactly. And it's the goal of writing so as not to disrupt the suspension of disbelief that makes technical writing interesting. The fragility of the metaphor and the shallowness of the suspension of disbelief are intriguing. Imagine the naïve user's confusion and sophisticated user's annoyance were you to write "Press OK" instead of "Click OK". Naïve user to help desk personnel: "I keep pressing your %!$&#! OK button, and no matter how hard I do it or how many times, nothing happens!"
Leonard C. Porrello
SoleraTec LLC
www.soleratec.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Ned Bedinger [mailto:doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:15 PM
To: Leonard C. Porrello
Cc: Techwr-l
Subject: Re: RE : More usage: "Open" or "Access" web addresses
Leonard C. Porrello wrote:
> Some argue that all language is metaphor.
In fact, it's not dificult to argue that "click" itself is metaphorical.
One doesn't click. The "mouse" clicks. To be strictly literal,
you'd have to say, "apply pressure to the left-most button on the top
of the mouse until you hear a 'click', then release the button."
Of course, this begs the question, "does a tree falling in a forest
make a noise if there is no one to hear it?" In other words, "does
the mouse really 'click', or is the 'click' merely just a human mental
construct?"
Fortunately, what does matter to language is the mental construct.
Greet it not as a tyrant, but as a liberator. It is our experience. That
is what will be reflected in the language. So, what is our experience?
My experience is that when I'm working on the computer, my mind lets the
objections, about what is real, fade to background, My mind wants to
suspend disbelief, and just assimilate the computer as an extension of
itself.
The image I like of this relationship between mind and computer is from
a cable documentary on the Giant Pacific Octopus--in the show, a captive
octopus is given a jar with a screw-on lid. Inside the lidded jar is a
frantic crab, the octopus's favorite food. After looking the jar over
briefly, the octopus envelops the jar, unscrews the lid, and gets the crab.
Like the octopus, our eyes are key to our ingenuity and experience. It
couldn't be any other way, considering that the eyes an brain have a lot
in common, far more than the other senses. In the embryo, our eyes are
extruded from the same tissue the brain forms from. Eyes are literally
the brain's window on the world. Of all the senses, the eyes alone have
direct, unfiltered, high bandwidth input to the brain. So, our
experience, both direct and, as a result, liguistic, is bound to reflect
the visual experience of a mind that has suspended disbelief and
assimilated the computer, with the cursor as its avatar.
I don't believe that the strict literal version, of how the mouse gets
clicked, is going to rise to the top of experience. The mouse, being
just a means for the mind to exert its will on its real focus of
attention (the cursor), will fade to the edge of consciousness, where I
can click click away without foregrounding the mental process much. In
the language, click will be all about the cursor, little at all about
the mouse.
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