Fishie - my "professions" is the creation, refinement, transmission, inspiration and communication of ideas, not the compilation and transmission of data.
That activity cannot be "obsoleted by technology," and until you understand this fact, we are not having a reasonable discussion - we have you standing atop a pile of ill-reasoned, erroneous data and offending your friends with your willful misunderstandings.
If you were to sit down - as I have, many many times - with the raw output of unedited text that passes for "writing" among the majority of people, you would understand that the difference between 3000 words of "hurtcbn;JKDFNHm,ngielelpthinlknD GHABBA HEYboggleighuihu" and "a sentence that is legible and comprehensible" involves years of training and labor on the part of people like me.
Language is a technology. Ideas are technologies. The refinement and transformation of the methods of storing and transmitting those technologies does not change the technologies themselves, nor does it eliminate the need for people who understand them.
Yes, a massive change is inevitable. I've been saying that myself for years. But a change in the publishing industry business model does not suddenly eliminate the technology of writing, much less the need for people who understand it.
And no, it does not suddenly mean that people who write, edit or typeset will suddenly offer all their skills and labor for free.
sure, there are people who do, and who will, create "data content" for free. Some of it is even good, though quality's pretty hard to find. From where, exactly, are they drawing their modes, materials and inspirations? From people who do it professionally. And why are they posting their stuff out there for free? Because most of them openly aspire to do it professionally themselves someday.
Doubt me? Try to find an original analog to War and Peace, Origin of the Species or even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone - comparable on all levels of quality - posted for free on a website. And then find someone who has created high-quality "net original content" who's not using it as a showpiece to score a place in the existing industry.
The crafts of professional-level writing, editing and publishing make all other technologies possible, too. Without them, you have a vast realm of incomprehensible gobbledegook that may or may not be accurate in any way. That copy of a plane design you mention? Written by writers, checked by editors, laid out by graphic designers, and based on the work of other writers, editors and designers who did the work upon which that copy is modeled.
You enjoy a book full of scientific information? Thank the writer who could assimilate the ideas and data therein into comprehensible form (not to mention the ones who did the same with the data and ideas that writer employs); the fact-checkers reading the work of other writers who did the same thing; the editors and proofreaders involved in the tightening of sentences and the elimination of (most) mistakes; the typesetters who worked that raw text (in whatever medium, be it hand-scribed pictograms or electronic pixels) into a readable and reproducible form... and finally, the parties who managed the resources involved with getting that reproduced "data" into your hands, wherever you might be.
These people are not "obsoleted by technology." The method of delivery might change, but the skills remain the same. Unlike a horse-shoe, a book cannot be stamped out by a die. The pages can be, but the content cannot.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
That activity cannot be "obsoleted by technology," and until you understand this fact, we are not having a reasonable discussion - we have you standing atop a pile of ill-reasoned, erroneous data and offending your friends with your willful misunderstandings.
If you were to sit down - as I have, many many times - with the raw output of unedited text that passes for "writing" among the majority of people, you would understand that the difference between 3000 words of "hurtcbn;JKDFNHm,ngielelpthinlknD GHABBA HEYboggleighuihu" and "a sentence that is legible and comprehensible" involves years of training and labor on the part of people like me.
Language is a technology. Ideas are technologies. The refinement and transformation of the methods of storing and transmitting those technologies does not change the technologies themselves, nor does it eliminate the need for people who understand them.
Yes, a massive change is inevitable. I've been saying that myself for years. But a change in the publishing industry business model does not suddenly eliminate the technology of writing, much less the need for people who understand it.
And no, it does not suddenly mean that people who write, edit or typeset will suddenly offer all their skills and labor for free.
sure, there are people who do, and who will, create "data content" for free. Some of it is even good, though quality's pretty hard to find. From where, exactly, are they drawing their modes, materials and inspirations? From people who do it professionally. And why are they posting their stuff out there for free? Because most of them openly aspire to do it professionally themselves someday.
Doubt me? Try to find an original analog to War and Peace, Origin of the Species or even Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone - comparable on all levels of quality - posted for free on a website. And then find someone who has created high-quality "net original content" who's not using it as a showpiece to score a place in the existing industry.
The crafts of professional-level writing, editing and publishing make all other technologies possible, too. Without them, you have a vast realm of incomprehensible gobbledegook that may or may not be accurate in any way. That copy of a plane design you mention? Written by writers, checked by editors, laid out by graphic designers, and based on the work of other writers, editors and designers who did the work upon which that copy is modeled.
You enjoy a book full of scientific information? Thank the writer who could assimilate the ideas and data therein into comprehensible form (not to mention the ones who did the same with the data and ideas that writer employs); the fact-checkers reading the work of other writers who did the same thing; the editors and proofreaders involved in the tightening of sentences and the elimination of (most) mistakes; the typesetters who worked that raw text (in whatever medium, be it hand-scribed pictograms or electronic pixels) into a readable and reproducible form... and finally, the parties who managed the resources involved with getting that reproduced "data" into your hands, wherever you might be.
These people are not "obsoleted by technology." The method of delivery might change, but the skills remain the same. Unlike a horse-shoe, a book cannot be stamped out by a die. The pages can be, but the content cannot.
(more)