Fatuous arguments and one-liners like the pro-choice statement, “An acorn is not a tree,” and the pro-feminist statement, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” pollute public discourse with nonsense. That such drivel finds an audience is testament to low educational standards established in the spirit of inclusion. Now every dullard is a scholar and, supposedly, has something worthwhile to say.
The blog, bytesandbricks.com, which compares real-world architecture with information architecture, is the author’s self-serving quest to explore her interests and career options. And it is one more such pollutant to our public discourse. I will not call the author a dullard. Her words speak for themselves.
She likens bytes to bricks in her blog, with bytes used to build websites, and bricks used to build buildings. Fair enough, but she also cites words as website building material. Just what is she saying? A byte is like a brick and also like a word? It can’t be both, and you can’t have it both ways. To paraphrase the pro-choice slogan, “A byte is not a brick.”
She has no authority to discuss either (or any of these) topic(s). She is not a published author; she is not an architect or even an information-architect — if you want to call that a profession. This trumped-up “discipline,” is a career-transition option of choice for washed-up technical writers such as herself, whose jobs have been “commoditized” and off-shored. And why not? Anyone can write, and writers elsewhere do it cheaper. Niche Writers India, for example, writes web content for $4 an article.
These former tech writers and would-be IAs, whose skills are on a par with those of a homemaker jotting down a shopping list, hope somebody will pay them to organize and label their website content. It’d be like paying somebody to decorate your house. Decorators have the arrogance to think they know better than you where to put your sofa and what color it should be. IAs and tech writers are just as arrogant and just as useless.
Any kid past the third grade can write. Any kid older than a toddler can straighten his or her toy chest. You don’t need an education to do this “job.” And you don’t need this blogger’s insights to tell you anything that you couldn’t figure out on your own, if you had the interest, and why would you?
I ask you, how can comparisons between structures of the real world — the buildings, streets, and highways that make up the built environment in which we live — and structures of the virtual world — websites that help you find a doctor or book a flight, buy a book or order dinner — benefit you in any way?
You can use these things without knowing anything about them. You know how to use a map, right? You know how to read signage on streets and in buildings to find your way over and through them. You can tell the difference between a church and a courthouse, or a school house and a roadhouse. (Hint: The former is a training ground for the latter.)
You know the difference between a brick, a byte, and a word. This blogger doesn’t. She sees all three as building units. She sees parallel structures in the real and digital worlds. She wants to explore these, and she wants to take you with her.
Don’t let her. Don’t bother investigating the “why behind the design.” Don’t bother learning how design choices affect consumers (that would be you). Don’t bother learning how and why design of the built environment can improve people’s neighborhoods and lives, or how the design of a website can make the site useful and usable or useless. Let this blogger waste her time if she wants. You’ve got better things to do.
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