2006
371 posts under this date.
No me llames extranjero, porque haya nacido lejos
o porque tenga otro nombre, la tierra de donde vengo.
No me llames extranjero, porque fue distinto el seno
o porque acunó mi infancia, otro idioma de los cuentos.
No me llames extranjero, ni pienses de dónde vengo
mejor saber dónde vamos, a dónde nos lleva el tiempo.
No me llames extranjero, porque tu pan y tu fuego
calman mi hambre y mi frío, y me cobija tu techo.
¡No!
No me llames extranjero,
traemos el mismo grito
el mismo cansancio viejo que viene arrastrando el
hombre desde el fondo de los tiempos,
cuando no existían fronteras, antes que vinieran ellos,
los que dividen y matan
los que roban, los que mienten
los que venden nuestros sueños.
Ellos son los que inventaron esta palabra: Extranjero.
Facundo Cabral, No me llames extranjero ( mp3)
Una cancion en contra del “otro” acusa al “otro” de inventar al “otro”!
Somo nosotros los que dividimos y matamos, los que robamos, los que mentimos, los que vendemos nuestros sueños. Somos nosotros los que inventamos la palabra extranjero. No es autoflagelacion, es solo reconocer que somos parte del problema.
The contrast’s interesting ain’t it? Joel On Software’s Joel Spolsky sees Dell’s homepage as a textbook case of heavy-handed, rapacious marketing. A List Apart’s Nick Usborne, on the other hand, sees it as one of computer industry’s best examples of self-effacing design, respectful of its users and the now-fashionable right to self-identificationWP.
Dell doesn’t think like their users think. When you go to their website, the first question they ask is what kind of buyer you are: home, small business, large business, etc. I don’t know what I am! I guess I’m a small business, but home systems are usually cheaper, and I usually like to buy top of the line PCs, so maybe I need the Big Business section. This distinction is completely lost on me.
I want a PC. What difference does it make whether I’m a home buyer or a small business buyer? I suspect that they are asking me this because they want to charge businesses more than homes, and large businesses even more. To defeat their system, I choose “home.”
Dell has what is probably the most visitor-centric site of all the computer manufacturers. For years now they have built a homepage that holds back on saying, “Look at us, we’re great.” Instead they devote a significant part of the page to an area where visitor can self-select.
The design and text on the page immediately recognizes that some people are looking for home computers, while others are looking for networks for local government offices. Both audiences and more are addressed. The Dell.com page says, in effect, “Yes, you’re
in the right place. Yes, we can help you. Yes, self-identify and please click here so we can help you find exactly what you need.”
If you want to share an anecdote or story from your life, pretend the readers weren’t there. Because they weren’t. “You had to be there” never makes a joke funny.
Readers crave your anecdotes and stories. They really do. So give ‘em the whole megillah. Instead of, “The party was a riot!” or “I’m depressed today,” carefully explain why. Elaborate. Parties and depression are perfectly good writing subjects. The Great Gatsby, for instance, has plenty of both.
Anything makes a good subject, as long as you take your time and crystallize the details, tying them together and actually telling a story, rather than offering a simple list of facts. Do readers really want to know how miserable you are? Yes. But they’re going to want details, the precise odor of your room, why you haven’t showered in a week, or how exactly somebody broke your heart. One–liners won’t suffice.
At the same time, you don’t want to over–explain yourself. Understatement can be thunderous, or humorous, or heartbreaking. Or all three.
Education doesn’t make you happy, and nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free—if we are; or because we’ve been educated—if we have; but because education may be the means by which we realise we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears… tells us where delights are lurking…
Iris Murdoch character in Richard Eyre’s IrisIMDB script
I can’t believe how silly happy I am some days. And then when I remember the world, and its great treasons, and the billions of un-happy, in-war, un-healthy, un-eating, un-knowing (of so much beauty!), still-mortal people in the world I can’t stall work any longer—but, you know, despite and impudently in front of it all, it just makes me happy to be so happy.
I just found an essay titled “Ambient Findability” by Peter Norville that seems almost like an outline of what would one year later become his terrific same-titled bookAM. The ideas are pretty rough and unpolished in the essay (or perhaps it’s only that I saw them first full-formed) but here are three highlights:
Google is undoubtedly having an impact on the evolution of the English language. I’d be surprised if the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary don’t have a secret threshold number of hits needed for new words to become official. “Blog” was recently added (3.7 million Google hits). I’m sure “Findability” is next (3,690 Google hits). Google is changing authority in ways we don’t fully understand.
As information becomes increasingly disembodied and pervasive, we run the risk of losing our sense of wonder at the richness of human communication.
And in the context of e-commerce, I’m fascinated and encouraged by the ability of customer reviews on sites like Amazon and Epinions to empower and inform consumers, increasing pressure on companies to build better products.
Interestingly, these reviews are driven by participation economies that reward the Top ReviewersAM with attention and trust. Note that the #1 Top Reviewer at Amazon (4550 book reviews) is Harriet KlausnerAM, formerly an acquisitions librarian in Pennsylvania. This just goes to show that librarians were destined to rule the Web.
My final discovery of A List Apart—a magazine “for people who make websites”—has been late coming, but as the article I’m about to talk about explains, relationships in the web are just difficult to establish (they require “an exorbitant amount of synergy”, why-the-lucky-stiff would say). I’ve been visiting them fairly frequently along the past couple of years and almost always I’ve learned something valuable. It is not only top-notch content, the attention to detail is painstaking too, though it takes you several visits to start noticing it: from the spot-on illustrations (most by the very talented Kevin Cornell), to the helpful snapshot feature at the right, to the issue-number stamp, to the tasteful ads, to the impeccable atmosphere they maintain throughout, to Zeldman’s and Kissane’s careful editing—it’s not a print wannabe, it’s the first web-only alreadyam.
The cover article of issue 221 (as of this moment, the latest) is a gem and the reason I started writing this post. By Amber Simmons, it is wonderfully titled ”Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful” and deals with how to write (particularly, with how to write for the web) by introducing the never-before-better-named idea of a faithful writer—a writer who thinks of her reader, who anticipates her questions and curiosities; a loyal writer, respectful of her reader’s time and intelligence; a writer who delivers. Truly great advice—I know I’ll never write the same again.
[Inside Friendster] there have also been Fakesters, evidence of how contemporary Americans crave connectedness. Users composed profiles for their pets (and then connected their pets), their colleges (and then connected to their alma maters) and household odds and ends (and then watched the conversation that developed between “salt” and “pepper”). To Ms. [danah] boyd it was interesting not only because people played with identity, but also because of the range of reasons they did so.
Apparently Friendster management could conceive of only one reason: to subvert the site. So it began terminating the Fakesters. That set off a Fakester revolution, complete with a manifesto: ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all fakesters and real people are created equal.”
I’ve been plowing through Humanized today and though it’s been somewhat less interesting than I thought it would be (perhaps my expectationsELZR were just too high), here are two very worthy text scraps:
Why do people use Google Maps? Because it’s just so nice to use. Microsoft’s Terraserver gave users access to high resolution satellite images many years before Google Maps did the same. (In fact, while attempting to be clever, I inadvertently terrified my to-be roommate: I used the service to view an aerial photograph of his home and asked him some leading questions about the stuff in his backyard. It took until the second quarter of college before he even talked to me, and then only warily.) But, it wasn’t until Google rethought online maps that the security and privacy issues of such a service came into the national conscience. Why? Because whereas Microsoft had given access to satellite imagery, Google made them accessible.
[Bracket Notation for Editing is] simply three sets of square brackets. The first set denotes deletion, the second set denotes addition, and the third set denotes a comment. It’s easiest to explain by example. Let’s start with a simple sentence plagued by two typical errors:
They called to say that their coming over in an quarter-hour.
An editor might revise the sentence to:
They called to say that the[ir][y’re] coming over in a[n] quarter-hour. [][][Be careful with “their” and “they’re”.]
This personal description still has me happy—it gives me the hopeELZR Friedman talked about at the end of his MIT lecture—and, well, befuddled. I mean, how can you do so much in so little time, how? I found it on the about page of Humanized, a collaborative blog on interface design and business-to-be. (He is the son of Jef RaskinWP btw, that explains some of it.)
Aza Raskin
President
Aza brings over six years of interface design and consulting experience to Humanized. He gave his first talk on interface design at his local San Francisco chapter of SIGCHI at the age of 13, got hooked, and has been speaking ever since. By the age of 17, he was talking and consulting internationally; by age 19, he was coauthoring a physics textbook because he was too young to buy alcohol; and at age 21, he started drinking alcohol and co-founded Humanized. Aza has also done Dark Matter research at both Tokyo University and the University of Chicago, from where he graduated with honors in math and physics. For recreation, he does Judo, speaks Japanese, and invents in his lab. He also enjoys playing the French HornWP, which has brought him all over the world as a soloist. Be warned: Aza is an incorrigible punster, so please do not incorrige.
On the flip side, it cheers me up that such blatantA geniuses (read the entire about page for the rest of the profiles) are interested in my chosen area too. Interface design will be the art form of the twenty-first century. Mind my words.
Now, as we enter the tenth dimension, we have to imagine all the possible branches for all the possible timelines of all the possible universes and treat that as a single point in the tenth dimension..
Your head will hurt afterwards (mine does), but it’s really a fascinating theoretical-physics presentation.
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