“Simple name-slug personalization can lift the click-through rate by up to 30%. We’ve seen true content personalization lift response rates by 300%.”

– Rachael Heapps (RappDigital) in an interview with Direct

Obviously this is talking about email marketing campaigns (though it’s probably not a bad idea sticking the name of the person you’re writing to on personal emails, either!) and is probably quite unsurprising. With a little bit of intelligent mailing (time-of-day scheduling, etc.) it’s quite trivial to make mass emails appear to originate from a real person. In my last job we sent out over 110,000 “name-slug” customised emails each week in a little over 8 hours (~15,000 an hour) and then a little faster after some optimisations (I think it was cut down to six), so if you start it not too late in the morning it’s quite possible to get out messages over the course of the day that appear as though they have a genuine, personal, author. (The purpose, of course, being the promotion of Australia’s number one cult-of-celebrity morning show!)

Of course that was newsletter content, not the “true content personalization” [sic] that Heapps speaks of, but for the most part it’s difficult to see the appeal of “true content personalization” more broadly — businesses will generally have a core focus and if their customers are receiving emails from them it’s probably in relation to that core area. Exceptions are obviously out there… two that spring to mind are wholesalers/distributors and multidisciplinary creative agencies (web/print, event/web, print/vision, etc.) that have fairly distinct groups of clientele.

For churches, “true content personalization” could take a variety of forms but probably won’t in the kind of automated capacity Heapps suggests. For example, you could potentially have different email messages for youth/adults, parents (kids ministry)/unmarried/childless adults, men/women. However, I do think these would be different email messages and not merely “personalisations” of the same core email. Then again, if your church sent out a weekly newsletter this might be somewhat different.

The way St Matthias does things is simply to send out emails as required to relevant people. This isn’t managed terribly well at present and I’m hoping we’ll be able to change that over to a proper email campaign system sometime in the near future (when, you know, spare time rears its ugly head!) — BUT, technical aspects aside — it does mean that there is a certain freeness in the way things are run.

We can send out emails any time, not just when it’s time for a newsletter to drop around — and we don’t need to send out emails at all unless there is some reason to. That last point is pretty important, because it means that people aren’t stressing about creating a newsletter each week/fortnight/month unnecessarily. It also means that email from Matthias, in the eyes of our members and partners receiving messages, remains a vehicle eminently for the purposes of communication. In a way, this is our version of “true content personalization”: irrelevance is not expected, and, presumably, we get a better response for it (though email and web campaigns are still quite separate… by which I mean to say web campaigns are non-existent, and we can’t track email responses accordingly!)

There is, of course, a factor of size. A youthgroup with even 40 kids and six or seven leaders is probably going to struggle to write enough content for a newsletter each week — or, even if they’re not struggling, there are perhaps better ways they could have spent that time. A larger group might find it immensely helpful to keep in touch this way.

“Newsletter” is a fairly abstract term, however, and don’t hear me saying there’s no role for emails that don’t communicate anything new. They’re great for sending reminders (automatic or manually crafted) about events even where people have known about the events for ages. They’re also great for consolidating things that have already been said or done (though I personally see much less of this happening — reflection is more the realm of blogs these days than email, perhaps). Most of all, they’re great when they’re personal and relational. A cold form-mail doesn’t have the same impact as a warm or slightly jovial form-mail, and even the slightly jovial form-mail pales in comparison with a truely personal message (in composition and content).

Which raises the question as to whether this whole thing seems strangely verisimilitudinous for a reason. We strive to emulate this personal essence in mechanical utterances (oh, gosh, it’s AH all over again) and find that we can lift our response rates with “true” (there’s the verisimilitude, I guess) content personalisation.

But this is just shouting in the marketplace. If we will blame email and electronic communications for the decay of interaction in society, we must remember that it is certainly not the first one-to-many medium. The only difference I can see is that, in this marketplace, there are sometimes walls of one-way glass that prevent reply. That metaphor is interesting, because it suggests that the speaker (the observed one, speaking to the marketplace) is the one most disadvantaged by this circumstance. We have no right to reply, but they cannot even see us. They know nothing about their audience; their audience cannot steer them in the right direction.

This isn’t some Cluetrain beatup, but an observation of what is, upon a little reflection, self-evident. Essentially, if you have a message to get across to people, don’t make their job in receiving it any more difficult than it needs to be. If you have ambiguities in your message, let them ask. The tendency of organisations to use no-reply@example.org email addresses is completely contrary to reason with regards to this issue of communication. The one exception is mass media, which is, it must be said, definitely not most of us.

After zero-config, installers work magically, 3d engines function, and everything is generally incredible. I read this on someone’s blog earlier today: “with that I was able to install the latest Wine (0.9.18 at the time of this writing). This comes with better support for HL2 and WoW.” and consequently was afraid the version in non-backports Ubuntu would be ancient, etcetera, and generally useless.

No, the author is correct in saying “better support” — there is intrinsically fantastic support for pretty much everything. It’s incredible. Now I’ve just got to get some time in which to play various games. Linux, apparently, is no longer a barrier to entry, and Loki Games (R.I.P.) would face an ever-diminishing challenge as compatability layers keep growing in their sheer brilliance.

I’ve yet to try productivity applications, but am content with having tentatively embraced the gamer side of geek for one weekend. I’d love to give Dreamweaver a whirl, but am unlikely to be doing enough development work to justify it for the next couple of months. MS Office would be a pleasant addition to the repertoire, though OpenOffice is excellent for most applications. I’d never go back to using Word for preparing real documents, but perhaps for things requiring collaboration/versioning it’s the best choice. I’d probably get MS Office for creating Powerpoint templates/editing other people’s work before I had any real need for it myself, so these things are still pretty unnecessary. It’s just fantastic to think that it is, all of a sudden, a possibility.

The irony of all this is that I’m waxing lyrical about closed-source apps when the actual intent of this post is to extoll the brilliance of F/OSS’s progress. Purists would argue otherwise… but they’re wrong :-)

Scene 4 in Act 2 of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline affords us a great deal that is of interest when examining the development of romance narrative throughout time.

This portion of the play is a scene — just in case, you know, everyone doesn’t, ah, remember what the reading was — a scene in which Posthumus is in the house of Philario, discussing the present political situation that exists between Rome and England. As Penny Gay mentioned in her second lecture on Cymbeline, there’s a certain departure from history at this point. We are made aware that there is trouble brewing over the cessation of the payment of tributes to Rome, and, in Posthumus’ words, “this will prove a war”.

It’s unabashed nationalism, completely shameless, and written in such a way that a contemporary audience would thoroughly approve: “You shall hear/ The legions now in Gallia sooner landed/In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings/Of any penny tribute paid.” O’Neill would, however, have us call this something other than the re-writing of History.

It is the construction of a fictional world — a fictional world that, it should be said, bears some mark of reality… but a fictional one nonetheless. In fiction, as O’Neill explains, everything is contingent upon nothing aside from the whim of the author; that term, of course, extending to include “playwright”, “poet”, and all other manner of narrative-creator.

So in this fictional world, against this backdrop of political turmoil, Iachimo enters. He enters amidst Posthumus’ nationalistic outbursts, and it almost appears as though Posthumus doesn’t realise the issue at hand has altered, so unfaltering is his courage in his spouse, as with his nation.

“I hope the briefness of your answer made/The speediness of your return.” — he could well be speaking of an emissary’s rebuttal at the hands of a foreign power demanding tribute. There is something diaphanous about the edges of these themes, as though Shakespeare has feathered them together intentionally. Our conception of “state” is quite different from that of marriage, but perhaps there is something to be made of the way in which they are together, here. I think it possible that we are being invited to examine Posthumus against expectations of what befits a “good” husband, specifically with regards to his leadership qualities. As a potential statesman, Posthumus has not yet been thoroughly disqualified. That comes in the scene following this, wherein he throws a hysterical, misogynistic, tempter tantrum.

I consider this juxtaposition of political and relational discussion something that is meant to connect the two in our minds: Posthumus is, afterall, being evaluated not only as the condemning husband of Imogen, but also as a potential ruler of the state. His aptitude for both roles is seriously brought into question throughout this play: and often through the same events.

In an environment of ironic crudity, the supposed elite of Renaissance Europe gather in Philario’s house, jesting about the constancy of, in particular, Posthumus’ wife Imogen. Posthumus is agreeably confident in his wife’s fidelity, but, somewhat less agreeably, willing to subject her to the approaches of one Iachimo. In concluding their wager, Posthumus declares:

Only, thus far you shall answer: if you make your voyage upon her, and give me directly to understand you have prevail’d, I am no further your enemy; she is not worth our debate : if she remain unseduc’d, you not making it appear otherwise, for your ill opinion, and the assault you have made to her chastity, you shall answer me with your sword.

This doesn’t take too much unpacking. In the case that Iachimo succeeds, Posthumus explicitly says “I am no further your enemy”. Back in Act II Scene IV, Iachimo is speaking of the particulars of Imogen’s chamber, and says he must speak in greater detail to justify his knowledge. Posthumus agrees, stating: “So they must,/Or do your honour injury”. There is a concern here for Iachimo’s honour even amidst his defamation of Posthumus’ wife. Again, on line 124, Posthumus responds to Philario’s rational suggestion that a corrupt servant may have taken a token on Iachimo’s behalf, saying “I am sure/ She would not lose it : her attendants are/ All sworn and honourable”.

Sworn and honourable, in fact, beyond the honour of his wife? Apparently, in Posthumus’ mind, this is true.

All this has a fantastic irony about it, as it serves both to critique Posthumus as leader, and as husband. The two are inseparable; Posthumus has failed in ways a Renaissance man is not permitted to fail, demonstrating his crudity, his lack of faith, his inability to lead responsibly even his wife — in the eyes of the audience, he has failed.

This is realised through a narrative that is calculating in its gradual revelation and construction of the character Posthumus: we see this in the establishment of the wager, Act 1 Scene 4; its continuation as Iachimo slowly unveils his deceit in Act 2 Scene 4, and Posthumus’ propensity to doubt his wife jealously; his tantrum in Act 2 Scene 5; and, later, his ordering her murder; and, later still, his groveling repentance rather unlike Iachimo’s stoic admission of guilt. Iachimo is, in some respects, an anti-Posthumus. He is calculating, not impulsive; cunning, not deceived; and orchestrator of much action with regards to Posthumus’ relationship with Imogen: he leads their relationship, whilst Posthumus is (falsely) led.

This should not be taken to mean that Iachimo is a paragon of great leadership — this is, afterall, a comedy in a world suspended between historical fact and Renaissance discourse. There is scope for some degree of reflexivity within this play, as Shakespeare pokes fun at his own characters, using others to delineate their foibles and propel the narrative towards its inevitable, genre-defined, close: poetic justice.

And I find this to be true of most other blogs I have perused in the past, with the obvious exception of completely simple statements/one-line commentaries to be found on posts that consist solely of a link to another site, and a summary comment/quip. Those aren’t blogs, though, they’re link-logs. Or whatever you’re going to call them.

Finally, I’m engaging with LJ people and am increasing perplexed as to how one is expected to interact in such an environment. All is normal, mundane, drawing a-heck-of-a-lot-of-comments; then there is a pebble (it is only a pebble) dropped onto the placid surface of a tightly strung membrane, pulled taut by dozens of interactors (commenters) who play a role in the blog context. It bounces.

Crack.

I picture it like ice, because that’s a dramatic image that appeals to me… shards, stress-fractures, moving across its surface at incredible speed. It’s not really like that, however. The surface is simply released from the edges. It’s like those parachute games you’d play as a kid… imagine people letting go of the edges — the pebble, or author (actually in my original metaphor it was the author’s pithy-one-liner post: either analog will suffice), is left in the middle beneath sheets of canvas.

Perhaps I misconstrue the response. Even beneath that canvas there is, perhaps (again), a subterranean response that goes unseen — that is, email, phone calls, SMS, IM conversations… I speak of an electronic communciations ecosystem only, for it perplexes me to think that anyone could or would use a letter to deal with such things: this, however, betrays my personal context: I am male and no longer at an age where I encounter my closest friends at school everyday.

But, it appears, this pebble bounces and causes those who were active to fall silent. Respectful.

That’s how I feel about it. That’s how I excuse it in myself.

As an alien, it is not my duty to respond… it would be inappropriate, engaging too much, likely to attract disdain, scorn. So afraid we are of being seen to reach out.

And I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I were to start posting the same kinds of one-liners I see all over those kinds of very-age-specific social networks, here. Would something explode, scaring all commenters away? I like to think I mix it up enough here that I scare everyone away equally… or rather, there are occasionally things that will interest all, but I have somehow managed to free myself from the constraints of writing for an audience. This is post 966, by the way. That’s developed writing… not good writing, just developed. Hopefully as I do so more I’ll understand the medium better… for me, yeah, there is a medium. Blogging is not useless (anymore).

Even LiveJournal is useful in its own (different to this) way… it’s chiefly social. That’s the thing about hosted services over DIY jobs. DIY jobs are the best. Yeah, WordPress counts as DIY. The point is, there’s no social facilitator in place. This isn’t Facebook or MySpace or LiveJournal. It doesn’t have any hooks into them (exception: LJ’s awesome OpenID is delegated to from this page), there’s no way to build links. I’m still an outsider technically, if not otherwise… LJ blow-in that I am and have been. But they’re outsiders, too. They’re outside every other social network on the planet. It’s that which I find most striking about social networks… they continue to facilitate fragmentation! Each cries out, “join our clique!” … and they often do.

Some are using Blogger, or even (MSN) Spaces. There are no social networking hooks between services. None of that group of friends uses RSS: they’re still manually checking (if, indeed, they do) these blogs. No convenient index-login-screen to say friends have posted new things. No attention-drawn to pithy one-liners to be ignored (or responded to in some hidden way?) The whole situation is utterly perplexing. And now I feel how I imagine a sociology student must.

Fulltext follows, incorrect formatting. PDF version also available (proper formatting, footnotes, etc.).

Chapter 26 of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad eloquently brings into focus a prevailing disparity between the values of an epic work borne out of oral tradition, and those of her twenty-first century critique of the same. Perhaps ironically, this chapter may be read as an assertion of the inadequacies of judgement aside from the context to which the alleged ‘crime’ belongs. Atwood’s portrayal of the Judge delineates with absolute clarity the detachment of classical and contemporary values, even illustrating a difference in the semantics of what is, today, an unambiguous term: “rape”.

The notion of ‘permission’ (i.e. consent) in the sense argued by the Attorney for the Defence is such that a third-party is granted control over every facet of the lives of their slaves.

Judge: (chuckles) Excuse me, Madam, but isn’t that what rape is? Without permission?

Attorney: Without permission of their master, Your Honour.

Bizarrely, the Judge plays along with this argument of words — eventually, leading to his/herThe Judge’s gender is undefined throughout dismissal of the case. Significantly, no judgement is made either for or against the defence. This is not, however, the only method used by Atwood to challenge the authority of a twenty-first century court of law. In the closing lines of this chapter, the responder is presented with a scene absurd in nature — certainly, a scene absurd from the perspective of the Judge — in which a “troop” of Erinyes appear, invoked by the incensed Maids’ demands for justice. The Judge is depicted ineffectually crying “Order! Order! This is a twenty-first-century court of justice! You there, get down from the ceiling!” — clearly, comment here is not only on the disparity of myth and reality, but also regarding the chronological state of this judging institution: it is rooted firmly in the twenty-first century, whilst the Odyssey is tied to a much earlier time; hence, no authority can hold.

Yet, for all this criticism of judgement, Atwood’s re-constructed appropriation of this mythAs was her brief: “[to retell] a myth in a contemporary and memorable way.” Atwood, Margaret. The Penelopiad. Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 2005. (Verso soft title page) has all the appearances of being a rather judgemental work. She ridicules preconceived images of Penelope’s character as a woman whose sole function was as a motif of faithfulness and patience, and develops a figure whose character is unambiguously strong (if perhaps of an aqueous disposition), and sneers at the notion of divine intervention in a number of instances, substituting Penelope’s own cunning. These variations from the commonly known ‘myth’ The Odyssey should not, however, be construed as necessary challenges to it. Myth is borne from an oral tradition, enabling scope for re-telling and variation: that is what Atwood has done.

There is a clear distinction between “The Chorus Line” — which, it seems, follows more closely the original version of events (distinguished from it by the imprimatur granted the maids to voice their complaint) — and the core narrative in Atwood’s work, which overtly challenges the centripetal epic mode of The Odyssey. Yet, in this chapter, the two are seen to coalesce, and the very purpose of the narrative is unveiled in dramatic style. The Furies are invoked in a block of dialogue characterised by excessive exclamation and rhetoric, as the Maids issue imperative after imperative to this “troop of twelve Erinyes”.

The impassioned language of these lines nearly disguises the work’s raison d’être, embedded here:

“Dog his footsteps, on earth or in Hades, wherever he may take refuge, in songs and in plays, in tomes and in theses, in marginal notes and in appendices!”

This, it would seem, epitomises Atwood’s role as author of The Penelopiad: she is one of this “troop of twelve” (or the entire troop), and is, in her re-construction of myth outside of epic mode, dogging the footsteps of Odysseus in songs, plays, and other literary works.Note the various modes employed by the Chorus throughout The Penelopiad: song; dance; film (video); and verse, both whimsical and hauntingly spoken in chorus. Is this ‘judgement’ of Odysseus? Arguably not. Atwood’s principle concern is the elocution of the Maid’s story (in the Chorus aspect of her work), and also that of Penelope. The two are undoubtedly intertwined, yet that is of less concern than the reasons behind Atwood’s election to convey these stories over any others, and the form in which she conveys them.

In the original text, the Maid’s execution consumes a paragraph. The death of the maids is not even the fault of OdysseusFulkerson, Laurel. “Epic Ways of Killing a Woman: Gender and Transgression in Odyssey 22.465–72.” Classical Journal 97, no. 4 (April-May 2002): 335–50. — In which it is suggested, amongst other things, that Telemachus sought to conduct the execution differently as an expression of his ‘coming of age’ (defiance of his father’s authority).: Telemachus declares “I will not give a decent death” to women who, by his reckoning, have “heaped dishonour on my head and on my mother’s”. Half of Atwood’s work is built off a paragraph. She recursively (i.e. in her version of the myth) evokes Furies to speak on behalf of those whose cause she champions, all the while fulfilling this role. Why does the original work not devote Atwood’s concern and compassion to the plight of these twelve maids? Clearly, something has changed.

Atwood’s own context is radically different from that of classical Greece, and, despite claims to the contraryButler, Samuel. The Authoress of The Odyssey. 1897. — In which it is proposed Homer was a female bard. Possibly true, but not an indication of any degree of equality in expression… especially for female slaves., The Odyssey can hardly be regarded as a tome delivered from a context particularly empowering to women. Conversely, Atwood is writing from a period of comparative equality — there is, undoubtedly, bountiful evidence of feminist influence upon this work. Her role, therefore, is that of consociate between the two periods, as she continues to “dog [Odysseus’] footsteps” in a new time, from a new perspective — giving a voice to the Maids they were previously denied, but not pronouncing them wronged. Judgement, it seems, is left to the responder. Atwood is an aggressive prosecutor of mythological standing, but the reader is called upon to make their own judgements. This trial presents the responder with precisely that: an invitation to draw one’s own conclusions — recognised as subjective — from the evidence presented.

Such pages, however, tended toward dullness and infrequent updating.

Or, to put it another way: Such pages tended to fulfill the original vision of the Web, which was to allow absolutely anyone to publish information that might otherwise be lost to the public, in a way that allows it to be searched, indexed, bookmarked, and linked to related information. And accessed by absolutely anybody who’s looking for it.

As opposed to today’s “dynamic” Web, where you need a broadband connection, an industrial-grade graphics workstation, and more plug-ins than a Roman orgy just to look up the atomic weight of molybdenum. Which you can’t bookmark because the URL is a dynamically-generated conglomeration of the hostname, your session ID, the phase of the moon, and the bra size of the webmaster’s current girlfriend, that doesn’t point to a page that’s actually stored on disk somewhere.

As nifty as it is that people have found new ways to make use of HTTP and HTML, we seem to be slowly losing the very concept of “publishing” as “preserving a record of today for future recall”. Instead of being the equivalent of an “address” where one can “go” to retrieve information, the URL has become a “magic incantation” that instructs a distant server to perform some action that may or may not produce the same results as the last time it was used.

In some ways, that’s good: it’s nice to be able to use the same mechanism to say “Bring up the latest edition of Dan’s blog”, “Show me the current pressure and temperature readings of Injection Molder #7″, and “Display page 7 from our company’s 2003 annual report”.

But there’s some very scary Orwellian potential here, as well as the risk of exacerbating the Digital Divide by constantly ramping up the minimal platform needed to access much of the web. Those librarians Dan mentioned lately shouldn’t be the only ones worried about making sure that a large percentage of online content remains “dull” and “static”.

I think the “Orwellian potential” bit is a load of scare-mongering crap (in relation to the other concerns posed in the article, at any rate), but everything else rings true.

I am, at present, working on the first large-scale project I’ve been involved in where <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX/ title=“Asynchronous JavaScript and XML”>AJAX is being utilised. In this instance, yes, it was my call: yes, I do feel it’s justified (reasons include traffic, and the advantage of not having to reload an entire page — yes, it’s large scale enough for that to be significant — and simple usability, because the architecture is such that users will desire to move quickly between elements of content, and AJAX facilitates that. More details post-release). We’ve been very careful to preserve functionality in non-XMLHttpRequest enabled UA environments, but it’s still not perfect — bookmarking is one (minor, given the nature of the content) problem that still requires rectification: that’s one thing I’m hoping to resolve tomorrow (along with general CSS compatability back to IE 5, possibly 4 — but that’s not particularly relevant). The Javascript is not particularly “unobtrusive” (still using inline onclick), which I’m hoping to similarly resolve prior to launch, but it’s not of any particularly great consequence.

This is not a site to be archived, as the author of the comment above laments. But he shouldn’t. That wasn’t ever this site’s purpose, so I’m not particularly concerned if the markup isn’t prestine. Yes, there will be RSS/Atom syndication. It’s a fairly Web 2.0 buzzword-compliant site, though (I hope) not particularly unneccessarily adoptive of such technologies. We’ll see.

Dean picked up my post via Technorati, a blog search engine that uses RPC update services to track what people are talking about in real-time. I was suitably impressed by this diligence and apparent desire to hear what the market has to say about their product: could this be the same company whose birth was so marred by a spat of cyber-squatting, in what Dean Jones was reported to have described as a fit of “youthful exuberance”?

Apparently so. Ansearch’s beginnings, though marred by dubious practices¹, received praise from various quarters of the mainstream press — or, at least, those quarters not controlled by News Corp, whose domains had come under threat. However, the Internet community responded quietly, and those voices that were heard were mostly of disdain at Ansearch’s domain practices.

Strangely enough, my original post wasn’t about any of that. I hadn’t heard of Ansearch until I read an article on them in the SMH — an article which reads a little too much like a rehashed press release for my liking: the telltale sign is in the closing sentence “Ansearch is the search engine division of Optum Ltd.” — if it were filed in the Business section of their paper, I’d understand, but it wasn’t.

I wandered over to their site, played around for a bit, and decided their offering was mediocre. In hindsight, it probably didn’t help that I wasn’t shopping for anything in particular — according to a ZDNet article, “In the short term [Ansearch] is focusing very heavily on the commercial end of the market.” — but at that point in time, I also don’t think they’d tuned their listings particularly well, as a search for DashLite turned up my WordPress hack over commercial listings for the actual Dashlite brand I inadvertantly used.

I say “at that point in time”, because it appears to have substantially improved since, as per Jones’ claim: “Much has changed since your first article on us some 6 months ago.”

Much improved, it seems, on several fronts. Their core offering has shaped up nicely, and some facets of my initial complaints regarding accessibility have been met. Their ancillary product offerings seem to have developed nicely: Ansearch CEO Jones claims “Each of [our properties] goes through up to 7 stages ranging from an initial, simple SERP/Directory style page through to a more involved service, mini portal, search tool, etcetera.” He went on to say that these ancillary properties (such as http://www.picsearch.com.au/, http://www.videosearch.com.au/, http://www.thefreedictionary.com.au/ and http://www.messengers.com.au/ amongst several others) are currently being actively separated from the core Ansearch site (he described it as “quarantining”), and the exact direction of a number of these projects would become clear over the coming months, with the appointment of a full time manager of these online properties.

I’m a tad concerned about his description of their strategy with regard to these — he said this would become clear over the months to come, and I’m hanging off two words here: distributed portal. Whilst I can see this as being of value to users (especially for generic, non-brand-specific/legally dubious domains such as jokes.com.au and the ones listed above), it doesn’t seem to fit Ansearch’s core strength as I perceive it: as a commercial portal, and not as another Google. “We are not aiming to be another Google… we don’t have their budget and, to be frank, there are enough people trying to clone them: why build another?”

In fact, Jones suggested that Ansearch’s strengths lie in that it is not the ubiquitous search behemoth, and that its index is “something unique… something faster… [and] against the so called “arms race” of search (my SE has more links than yours etc…)”. I’d agree this is indeed a strength, and also a reason for them not to try and be a portal. Australia already has Yahoo! and NineMSN for domestic portals, and I’m struggling to see what Ansearch will do to differentiate themselves in this: but I’m happy to be surprised!

Ansearch apparently holds an index of only 500,000 websites considered by its metrics to be “most popular”. I argued that this was potentially a bad thing as relevant content might lie outside this realm: for example, this website performs well when people search for reviews of the HP 2610 or information about Apache on Ubuntu linux or ACT files from MP3 players that record audio, but isn’t included in Ansearch’s core index.

Which is perfectly valid, for a commercially-focussed site, I just think they could be missing out a little bit. They can leverage on my content for their advertising impressions and potential clickthroughs, because they have more valuable content showing up in their listing alongside advertised products. If someone reads my HP 2610 review after having found it in Ansearch, and decides they’d like to buy it and remembers having seen a “Buy HP printers!” ad on Ansearch, they’ll most likely click “back”. It’s abstract, behavioural stuff, but valuable nonetheless.

Whether it’s valuable enough for them to bother is another matter. “We spider our own content… something that over time will be done daily,” says Jones. “Having only 500,000 websites will allow us to index sites more often, and as is the case with the ‘site info’ pages, provide far more info on these pages.” Which is a value-add, and worth preserving. If that’s all resources permit, I think they’re doing the right thing as is. Jones openly admits Ansearch’s index of popularity “has a commercial flavour to it” — and rightly so. Given their much-touted gender and age demographic based search feature, this makes sense.

Their index of popularity seems to be fairly slow-moving. “Monthly we add around 20,000 sites… and take out 20,000.” I’d guess this would be the lowest 20,000 that gets shuffled, and this seems to make sense. One has to wonder whether all the higher-ranking pages can have substantially fresh content month after month, but presumably they do — it’s one of the things the SEO experts have always cried from rooftops.

It was interesting to hear Jones speaking about these people, too: amusing, even! Web developers the world over often join in speculation as to what exactly makes search engines tick, such that we can boost our clients (or employers) website’s performance. It seems the reverse is also true: search engines all over the world similarly speculate as to what those horrible developers are doing to screw with their indexes day in and day out!

I don’t say this in jest, and I believe they’re right to complain: “The larger SE’s are having a very tough time coming up with clever ways to index content to counter SEO… only to have SEO’rs quickly find ways around it. Cat and mouse…” I think “counter SEO” was a poor choice of words, given that relevant content should hopefully still be rewarded, but his point stands.

Just as interesting is Ansearch’s strategy to avoid falling prey to dodgy SEO tactics:

By only indexing the root page, we remove almost all SEO trickery. This works in 2 ways. Firstly, people rarely put spam on their home page — that is, doorway pages, link farms, etc. usually reside away from the main index… and, secondly, it deletes multiple results from the same website. It also stops the site owner/webmaster from saying they are relevant to 100 or 1000 keywords or phrases.

Kids, we just found a new argument against clients who love their splash pages!

Content rich front pages aren’t, however, an absolute solution (at least, not in Ansearch’s index). According to Jones, Ansearch’s policy of “ranking sites in true usage popularity, both on and offsite” is “SEO proof… or at the very least, extremely resistant.” I’d agree it’s a powerful metric, but my reservations above still stand.

One caveat of Ansearch’s algorithm that appears potentially exploitable is its failure to exclude content in the from indexing. I don't just speak of standard meta author/keywords data, but of something else.

As highlighted in the screenshot above (click for original page, link may expire), Ansearch’s listing is including content between <style> tags. This presents potential for SEO abuse², as most browsers happily overlook errors in CSS — and <style> tags can be placed towards the top of a document: if we are to believe the SEO myths, increasing their relevance in engines. Of course, it’s entirely possible the content bears no weight at all — but the question of why it is stored in their index at all remains unanswered.

This is another reason to reward websites that use semantic markup properly, though at this stage that would exclude disproportionate amounts of the web, so I understand engines’ hesitance to embark on anything like this. It’s not something a lot of sites use”, says Jones, before continuing “but it will be used more and more in the future.” Well, so much of the web community hopes.

This formed part of Ansearch’s defense for not having embraced semantic markup from the outset. According to Jones, it’s built on a technology developed for a pre-April 2000 (dot com crash) search engine — so that partially excuses the markup at launch time. Jones’ first comment on their failure to use semantic markup was simply that “The majors [Google and Yahoo!] don’t use it” — something I’d dispute the validity of, as Ansearch isn’t a “major” player, and, as has been established, is chasing a fairly different market sector. Their core business is search, but it’s a different breed of search conducted in a different way: and semantic markup and accessibility is a different way. Encouragingly, Jones sees the potential for embracing semantic markup in the future on both technical and commercial grounds: “It makes sense to use it and as it does open us to a wider audience with various devices used to browse our site.”

He didn’t cite the “reduced bandwidth expenditure as a result of lightweight code” reason, presumably because their host, OzHosting/Destra charges only for the link, not for transfers over this, on their dedicated server range.

Irrespective of their reasons, the future of Ansearch in terms of markup is promising:

Our long term goal is to have Ansearch website designed without any tables and heavily styled using the CSS, which eventually will gives us more control on how we present our site to different media types.

Ansearch has gone through several minor enhancements over the past 6 months with the releases of versions 1 to 1.3. We are currently planning a major update for version 2.0 and the issues [of semantic markup and separation of presentation and content] will be addressed.

But as we know, markup isn’t everything: content is what ranks well in search engines erm… content is what draws an audience. Ansearch’s exploration into the development of portal environments is something to be watched with interest over the coming months, as well as its other business aspects, including an advertising network known as Soush that remains slightly enigmatic, and the mysteriously named “Factory” division.

An announcement is expected to be filed with the ASX later this week outlining something of Ansearch’s future direction: At this stage, I’m inclined to believe that the future is a positive one, as Ansearch distances itself from its much-criticised practices at launch, to a diverse range of product offerings that uniquely fulfil the needs of Australian Internet users.

Update: A followup to this has been posted, in response to a criticism that this review was overly technical in nature. Read on!

Notes

¹ Justified with the catch-cry “MSN do it, so we can, too!” — to which the only sensible reply is, “yes, but MSN do it with Internet Explorer, and as soon as you go and write your own web browser, feel free to hijack as many unused pages as you want.“
² I notified Ansearch of this shortly prior to publication in the hope that, if this is indeed an issue, it will be resolved before this post is noticed and widely acted upon. One hopes this potential problem disappears quickly.

Michael Ondaatje’s novel, In the Skin of a Lion, can be said to have textual integrity as a result of the way in which the composer has shaped this novel, through a variety of techniques employed. Textual integrity itself can be said to embody a timelessness in literature: that is, ‘good’ literature is shaped by its textual integrity, reflected in the ways in which values within a text are presented, as well as the universality of themes discussed.

‘Setting’ exists in three spheres that are often seen to intersect, these spheres being Location, Time, and Critical Influence. And, further to this, any text that recreates the past – especially when postmodernism is an accepted influence – involves two intersecting fields of time: The author’s own, and that in which they delineate the events of their work.

Construction of a work that can be said to have ‘textual integrity’ and hence be considered a model of ‘good’ literature, or literature of timeless value, is therefore complicated when a post-modern style is employed that attempts to construct a text adequately flexible to accommodate the creation of new meaning in a way that accurately reflects the values of a period now elapsed.

Ondaatje’s novel, In the Skin of a Lion, is one such text: it creates layered meaning, employing a form true to the post-modern ideal – that is, rejection of a mandate that meaning must be created through textual delineation, as meaning in a post-modernist form can be constructed in any number of ways, though the nature of this meaning is malleable – whilst depicting events that preceded the advent of such an ideology.

Inherently, this poses challenges: However, used effectively, juxtaposition of historical content and critical perspective of this period against contemporary influences in the sphere of critical theory can yield in literature a quality that is best described as timeless – it creates an integrity that spans ideologies and events, and transforms the narrative into an overarching vessel that may function as a container for any number of (even opposing) ideologies and social paradigms, simultaneously.

This, of course, is the defeat of intent in a work. Ondaatje cannot be said to have achieved anything, as he set out to achieve nothing and everything when his work first assumed a post-modern form. Indeed, post-modernism is inherently an abstraction, incapable of embodying any particular message. In embracing its doctrines, authors surrender wholly their work’s value to the whims of the responder: but Ondaatje cannot be said to have wholly embraced this ideal.

Certainly, the structure of his work is post-modern. Irrefutably, the syntax utilised for denoting structural elements in this work could be described thus, for no other reason than it is a rejection of conventional form and syntax utilised in narrative works: it is eclectic, “loose” in nature. Ondaatje writes of the “extreme looseness of the structure of all objects”, and, on the surface at least, his narrative reflects this ideology. Yet, his tribute to post-modernism is confined to the superficial. Post-modernism is Ondaatje’s link to the contemporary world, important in presenting an image of timelessness. There is, perhaps, a truth in his assertion that all objects have a looseness of structure – but, in accordance with the post-modern paradigm, this truth is open to challenge. And, in beautiful irony, Ondaatje’s own work is the vessel from which an attack on this truth may be instigated.

Ondaatje’s novel begins with a chapter entitled “Little seeds”, supposedly an allusion to the seeds of explosives that his father must painstakingly remove from his clothes… and the coining of a metaphor, a persisting motif, for the gradual development of the character of Patrick throughout the text until he dons “the Skin of a Lion” and – in a fitting conclusion to such a metaphor – ‘explodes’, or attempts to explode, the waterworks. These little seeds are the first of many aspects of the text to defy post-modernism and this ideology of “extreme looseness of structure”. The language used is rich in metaphor, certainly: and, inherent in metaphor is the possibility of deriving multiple interpretations. However, before the beginning of Book One even, Ondaatje speaks of “bring[ing] together various corners of the story” – and this stands not alone, but ties itself to a question with an invisible imperative: “Do you see?” This could, perhaps, be read as Patrick’s enquiry: “Do you see my story?” “Do you see”, it seems, connotes something that is to be seen, proposes that there is a structure to things, and suggests that this structure is resolved at some point. All of this, of course, defies the post-modern ideal of looseness. Certainly there is an element of ‘looseness’ to this narrative – but it is still a narrative. There is a story behind it, and, whilst there can be more than one interpretation, there remains a dominant message that Ondaatje has constructed and resolved with the bringing together of “little seeds” to form a cohesive narrative, and this cohesion, it seems, is against the post-modern ideal of “looseness”.

The post-modern aspects of this work, then, are utilised only fleetingly in order to develop an overarching structure – more accurately a superstructure – in which various other structures of critical theory are contained. This in itself creates in the work a timelessness or transient nature, though this timelessness does not come at the expense of a formulated narrative: Ondaatje’s work has structure, and definite plot, with an undeniable progression and resolution. Yet, this plot with all its progression and resolution is open to a variety of different readings and interpretations based upon the ideology of the responder, in accordance with post-modern doctrine.

However, the scope of such variation is restricted to the confines constructed by Ondaatje. His text is crafted with particular influences in mind, namely, the critical influences that influenced much academic thought of the early twentieth century. Consequently, it is possible to extract with ease Marxist and Feminist readings of this text, due to the focus of his narrative. Ondaatje depicts characters holistically, characters that defy stereotyping both within the text’s setting (chiefly 1920’s Toronto), and Ondaatje’s own (1988, Toronto); he also focuses on minority groups, such as migrant communities. These groups appear to be disillusioned, disenfranchised with the barriers that exist between them and mainstream society, but much of this is in the presentation.

The content of In the Skin of a Lion lends itself to feminist or post-colonial readings – though post-colonial literary theory was not to emerge as a recognised force until the mid– to late-1970’s (Said’s 1978 work Orientalism provides some basis for these dates) – whilst the style and emphasis of this content (in an aesthetic sense) enables a Marxist reading with themes of oppression, class conflict and “official” versus “unofficial” histories prevalent throughout the work. Completing the ‘setting’ is the structure of the work: namely, a structure that is post-modern in nature, and encompasses all other aspects of the work.

Textual integrity is constructed carefully through embracing a range of intellectual and critical analyses, and thus allowing the work to be viewed from a variety of perspectives (Marxism, Feminism) in a variety of cultures (Post-colonialism). These ‘perspectives’ (a simplified aspect of critical theory as a whole) are accepted or legitimised by the aspects of this text that support such theories or readings. In this way, the text can be said to have textual integrity, as it becomes universally applicable in the sense that it is no longer bound to a specific time, or place. For example, a Marxist critic can draw a ‘truth’ considered in the Marxist framework of thought to be undeniable and absolute in the human experience – namely, that there exists a system of oppression in societies that advocate (or, do not opposed) “bare-knuckled capitalism” such as that exhibited by Ambrose Small in In the Skin of a Lion.

Post-modernism, therefore, can be seen to encompass all aspects of the text, and provide for their existence – much as Ondaatje himself provides for their existence through crafting the work. Other aspects of the text are transient and non-requisite: the enabling force in all of this is the post-modern structure encompassing all other theories and ideologies in a neutral or even ambivalent form. Post-modernism is purely contemporary, an ideology that has emerged only in the late twentieth century – unlike those contained within it in this text. Whilst there is a conflict of interest between the ideal of truth being [absolutely] relative in post-modern thought and notions of ‘truth’ as presented in other critical theories, such incongruities are largely disregarded in Ondaatje’s construction of In the Skin of a Lion.

It is, however, important to consider the reasons for which Ondaatje has constructed his text thus. Certainly, the presentation of ideologies inexorably bound to theories dominant in popular and academic thought of another time is inevitable in a piece of good literature when such a work is set as In the Skin of a Lion is. This may be accepted to be self-evident, and is of little consequence aside from its marginal contribution to the preservation (or creation) of textual integrity. Of greater importance is the effect of such presentation [of alternate ideologies] on the timelessness of a work, its flexibility, and, consequently, its potential value in any other ‘setting’ or context (encompassing time, place, and critical thinking).

The rift between the ‘setting’ of In the Skin of a Lion and that of its composer is the better part of a century characterised by rapid change in ideology in response to globalisation, the widespread adoption of communication technologies, and popular disillusionment in response to conflicts that have resulted in more people being killed in that century than in any other period in history – popular disillusionment that manifested itself in widely in the decade preceding the ‘setting’ in which Ondaatje writes through the anti-war movement of the time.

This disillusionment manifests itself in post-modern thought and in a subsequent popular revival of relativism. This is, therefore, reflected in the form of Ondaatje’s work – a form based on post-modernism’s rejection of conventional structure. There is even an anarchistic element to the structure in its alternation between conventional and post-modern styles, with this demarcation clearly apparent.

Such anarchy is similarly reflected in the content of the work, depicted through the influence of Alice on Patrick, culminating in both her death and his own anarchist aspirations (that are ultimately realised not through action but through assuming “the skin of a lion”): and, before them, the death of Cato. It appears to be the result of catalysts in succession—Cato on Alice, Alice on Patrick, Patrick who is reached through Clara. This, once again, denies the “extreme looseness of the structure of things” in that there is a clear relationship that exists, that can be expressed, and even understood. Post-modernism is indifferent to anarchy, whilst anarchy [ironically] sets about destroying the structure of things, and yet the evolution of such an ideology in In the Skin of a Lion rejects the superstructure in which it is ‘contained’.

Anarchy, of course, stems from alternate ideologies that provide a reason for the terrorist actions. Behind anarchism is an ultimate goal other than simply the destruction of structure and the creation of an “extreme looseness” – there is always a driving ideology that exists behind it. Anarchism functions with an intent to reform, to later reconstruct a new structure that will empower the disenfranchised and those who are disillusioned with the present order of things. This is so in the text, with Marxism being the driving force behind such anarchism: there is always an intent to overthrow the imperialist ruling classes and give a voice to those who are without one. Marxism is recognised as being a prevalent influence not of the author’s setting, but rather of the period in which the text is set – and this ideology is recognised with a close link to that of voice and the ‘immigrant experience’ – notably, linked closely to post-colonialism and the breaking away from preconceptions of foreign states.

This idea of ‘voice’ in a place with an established language and culture (primarily western) is a subject with far-reaching links not simply to the Marxist construct of oppression by an imperialistic society and an ever-expanding bourgeoisie class, but also to the far more contemporary emergence of post-colonial literary theory. Thus, the idea of a misrepresented and voiceless class formulated from immigrants in a post-colonial framework is challenged, just as Marxism was seen to challenge the status quo of the 1920’s as presented in the text. Ondaatje uses this convergence of chronologically distant ideologies to exhibit a textual integrity through demonstrating the timeless nature of literature in terms of the themes explored.

The responder witnesses a paradigm that transcends the better part of a century (or more, if the time between the advent of Marxist thought and the emergence of post-colonial literary theory is considered) to present an ideology that remains congruent irrespective of setting – ironically, demonstrated through the juxtaposition of setting to exhibit its irrelevance.

In this way, Ondaatje binds chronologically distant elements together, encapsulating a period of time and establishing ‘truth’ that prevails across a series of ideologies – textual integrity is established through the development of such timelessness in terms of the concepts presented, and this is bound together by aspects of critical theory combined under the auspices of post-modernism.

*Josh really really really hopes fonts embedding works properly*

Aaaannnddd the Flash version worked great, fonts and all! Thankyou, OpenOffice!

Fulltext of the presentation, with slide cues, as promised. PDF, filesize: stupidly large (280KB). Don’t know what happened there!

As for the content of the thing, no jokes are required about me being unable to write an essay/speech without reference to accessibility! It’s purely incidental, I promise! On a slightly more serious note, if some of the sentences utterly suck, chances are I didn’t speak them that way… my paper version had a few pencilled-in corrections, and then there was the inevitable “read but speak differently” factor. The end.

Read on for a HTML version of the same.

Seminar Presentation

Conveying an understanding of the nineteenth century world, and the way in which composers have sought to comment on the institutions and values of the period through critical and creative works.

The nineteenth century world, as presented by various authors of that time, was a period of questionable and oppressive values, in which the individual was significantly burdened by the expectations placed upon them by society. One of the more insightful models developed to explore or explain the presence of values considered to be oppressive or otherwise inequitable in nineteenth century society was the notion of a “compact majority”, devised by playwright and poet, Henrik Ibsen.

Ibsen argued that, within society, there exists two key groups. In this model, the group generally identified as the proletariat is referred to instead as the “compact majority” – that is, the value accepting group. This “compact majority” is seen to accept the dictat of the value-generating/value-electing group – that is, “the establishment”, which is comprised of various influences, including political bodies, religious groups, and educational institutions – all of whom are responsible for creating and disseminating values. These are the two key groups within society, although Ibsen suggests that there is another still. He terms them “fighters at the outposts” – this group rejects the values imposed upon them by society, or, at the very least, is seen to challenge them.

In Ibsen’s own works, we see key figures such as Nora and Dr. Stockmann, as well as supporting characters, such as Captain Horster and Petra, portrayed as these “fighters at the outposts”. The manner in which Ibsen critiques society is consistent with this model, which itself invites further discussion.
Ibsen’s criticism of “society” here is confined to a particular aspect of the same. Perhaps inadvertently, he excuses the “compact majority” and, on the charge of social injustice, instead foregrounds the value-electing group as sole perpetrators – they appear to be offered in appeasement, a propitiation for the crimes of society as a whole. Consistently, it is those with power depicted as being guilty of committing crimes against the individual in nineteenth century society – and this is not confined solely to the works of Ibsen.

Whilst discussing Ibsen, however, it is worth noting that this concept of the powerful oppressing the individual does not function in a pseudo-Marxist political framework – quite the opposite. In Act Four (IV) of Ibsen’s play, An Enemy of the People, Dr. Stockmann declares that “The minority is always right.” He is speaking of the fighters at the outposts. For him, the resistance shall always be a minority movement – the masses are controlled by the value-electors, who, strangely enough, “approve of the very truths that the fighters at the outposts held to in the days of our grandfathers.” Placing aside all argument regarding the apparent futility of their cause in light of this extreme relativism, it is clear that Ibsen holds the establishment-opposing minority of “the outposts” to be correct.

A recurring feature of texts studied and considered to be the canonical works of the nineteenth century is this lucid critique, obviously directed not at any “common” people, but at the value-setting classes and bodies. For this reason, Ibsen’s model is rather insightful, especially given that he did not have our present benefit of hindsight.

Ibsen’s rather explicit identification with an elite minority is something other authors and playwrights of the period perhaps do not as candidly express, although analysis of their works would suggest that many of Ibsen’s peers agreed with him in this. A commonly heard criticism from this class is that the writing styles employed by authors – especially Henry James – of 19^th century literature are long-winded and overly conversational in nature. Ibsen is spared this criticism as a small mercy of translation, and James has the defence of his deliberate speech when dictating his works to a scribe – both these aside, the ‘accessibility’ of these works has often been criticised – and not without reason.

“Shakespeare was written for the masses.” This notion is indoctrinated into students throughout high school, to the point where it is possible to make the assumption that any archaic language in canonical works was once perfectly intelligible to the common people. Needless to say, it wasn’t.

Even Henry James’ peer and friend, Edith Wharton, has expressed difficulty in comprehending James’ languid style, however, of greater importance is the accessibility of the text to the common people. Regardless as to the message within a text, this must be encoded in a form the target audience is capable of understanding. A Marxist criticism of literature is quite applicable here – without a doubt, much of this literature we now see to have had an impact in the nineteenth century was inaccessible, employing a lexicon beyond that of much of the population. Composers have sought to comment on the institutions and values of the period not through a blatant and “accessible” appeal to the common people, but in another way.

Both James and Wharton are somewhat self-critical in their writings, in the sense that both belong to the aristocratic element of society that they sought to criticise. Wharton’s The House of Mirth, although written in 1905, may be viewed a product of the century prior in terms of the values it criticises. Whilst contemporary sensitivities may cause us to reject the notion that such criticisms are timeless, there is an element of truth in such a proposition; certainly, society had not seen that much change between the previous century and 1905. Both works critique the indolent nature of these classes, as well as the nature of relationships and the influence of wealth upon these.

Notably, social criticism in both these works is confined to the value-electing group, without allusion to the wrongs of the “compact majority”. This is consistent with Ibsen’s criticism of society – the “compact majority” are largely ignored, the group of lesser consequence in the scheme of things, for if social issues are to be resolved this must, apparently, be achieved from above.

The texts examined thus far all contain characters of greater wealth and status than perhaps would be considered representative of the typical person in this period – perhaps this is justification for the focus on the ills of the value-setters?

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles is set in the imagined county of Wessex – the purpose of this “imagined” county being to capture the cultural atmosphere of the English countryside, prior to the impact of the Industrial Revolution. From the location alone, Hardy has refrained from a direct critique of the members of a moneyed aristocracy, and yet, by the end of this novel, the nature of criticism is perfectly clear.

Alec d’Urberville is the most explicit figure of such aristocracy in this text, portrayed as having come into money, and acquiring the all-but-forgotten name of d’Urberville – one of many aspects of this text foreshadowing the demise of Hardy’s protagonist. As an object of criticism, Alec is mostly left alone for the earlier parts of the book – following his rape of Tess, Alec quietly disappears, as more poignant criticisms of society are elucidated by Hardy, in the development and subsequent fall of the relationship between Angel and Tess – Hardy criticises the institution of marriage, and, through this, the oppression of women in society. Tess is portrayed as being unable to survive alone. Alec d’Urberville is brought back into the flow of the text, first with Hardy’s masterful use of irony, in a form that criticises the notion of forgiveness within Christianity, and highlights the hypocrisy of the institution of the church itself, and subsequently, most importantly, to make Tess dependent upon him, as she struggles to escape from poverty at Flintcomb Ash whilst still attempting to support her mother and siblings.

As with Ibsen, the criticisms in this text are primarily directed at the institutions of the nineteenth century, rather than at the common people. Tess is presented as being blameless, and the faults of her father and the other occupants of her birthplace are depicted with far greater compassion than Hardy’s portrayal of the hypocritical and flawed nature of society’s value-setting institutions.

So what are these “value-setting institutions”? Some have already been defined. The governing bodies, the church, educational institutions. But there are other groups beside these, less often subjected to criticism. Poet and translator Augusta Webster satirically writes in her poem A Castaway of how “worthy men… think all’s done” if the people can just be made to listen – satirical not because the people refuse to hear, but because their listening serves to resolve little. The speaker in Webster’s poem is a prostitute, who declares herself modest, launching into a criticism of all professions – lawyers, preachers, doctors, journalists, tradesmen…

This sort of blanket criticism is easy to disregard, however, other texts are seen to support such a viewpoint, though their expression is less explicit. The question at this point is how does one define this ‘blanket’ group? In Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, the protagonist attempts to warn the community of a danger in their midst, and is ostracised for it. It is clear to the reader that the community will eventually fall prey to the contamination, and in this way Ibsen passes judgement on another institution – that of the “community”.

It is this notion of community, sacred in Victorian thought, that is seen to oppress the individual. This “community” is comprised primarily of the value-accepting “compact majority” who are seen to enforce the values of the establishment. The way in which composers have sought to comment on this is two-fold, with some electing to criticise the value-setting classes alone, in an attempt to instigate change from above, whilst other authors, such as Ibsen and Webster, instead launch their critique at the masses, who, by their passivity and acceptance of values, are seen to be in conflict with the individual.

The values of the period, as well as the institutions responsible for dissemination of these, have been commented on and criticised by composers in a variety of ways. The nature of this comment is seen to depend on the author’s own background, and, through exploring this, a greater understanding of the nineteenth century world is developed.

Because I haven’t got time to come up with content solely for this website at the minute. 1645 words.

Nineteenth century composers bring the plight of the individual to the responder’s awareness through their portrayal of such characters in a way that appeals to the responder either through the use of empathy, or, in the case of other works, through the use of a rising/falling conflict model in conjunction with elucidatory dialogue to elicit a response from the responder.

Henrik Ibsen’s play Ghosts uses the latter model, making use of clever expositions presented by character in order to force readers to question the society in which they find themselves, and their roles as individuals within that framework. An encompassing work, Ghosts has been criticised as being “a little bare, hard, austere”, in which Ibsen has conformed too much to the prosaic ideal and stifled his poetic nature – and, in this, become an author who “cares more for ideas and doctrine than for human beings.” Ironically, it is this portrayal of such ideas and doctrine that, for many, makes this work one of overwhelming humanity.

The model employed by Ibsen here renders characterisation superfluous – his characters are not bound to a single person, to a single individual, but are seen to represent any number of people individually within humanity. Having said this, Ibsen’s works do not generally support the notion of a universal common humanity in which beliefs are shared, drawing a distinction between the “outposts”, the ruling classes, and the “compact majority” – and there is no reason to suppose he deviates from this understanding in Ghosts.

Rather than being a character-driven book, in which empathy is used to endear a protagonist to the responder, Ibsen’s characters are somewhat flat and undeveloped, although in their behaviours, established through dialogue and stage directions, as well as their interactions, they are portrayed as being in conflict. Pastor Manders embodies the oppressive, hypocritical nature of religion – he is more concerned for the appeasement of those who would criticise his lack of faith than he is for the practicality of insurance – a practicality he recognises, but advises against for “the attacks that would assuredly be made upon me in certain papers and periodicals”.

The gullibility of this character with regard to Jacob Engstrand’s nature is not simply that, but rather a reflection of the blindness of religion to many aspects of individual natures within society as a whole – Ibsen comments on the irrelevance of religion in the limited characterisation of Manders, and then further delineates this irrelevance through the conflict introduced between various characters and this figure.

Yet Manders is not simply the representative of the church. Within Ibsen’s model of society, Manders wields a ruling influence from which the “compact majority” draw their values and belief systems. The critique is not only one of the religious establishment, but is inclusive of the state and legal systems – something reflected in the injustices portrayed in A Doll’s House. The accusation levied against such institutions is one of aloofness – Ibsen proposes such institutions are distant from the individual, and cannot adequately comprehend their needs. The epitome of this is his support of euthanasia in the closing scene of the play – a something wholly unacceptable within that society, and similarly open to question in this age. Ibsen argues in favour of this, the closing scene of the play being emotive in its stark nature and eloquent stage directions. The work concludes almost poetically, with Oswald mindlessly repeating a phrase, as his mother, Mrs. Alving, grows hysterical at what he has asked her to do – and the responder can empathise with both figures, neither of which have been understood by the establishment. In establishing such a dichotomy between the state and the individual, the plight of the individual in a collective sense – that is, humanity as a collection of individuals – is brought to the consciousness of the responder.

Empathy is limited as a result of (deliberately) restricted characterisation, but Ibsen’s purpose is still achieved in this work, though perhaps without the nuance of his other works. An Enemy of the People, also by Ibsen, draws a distinction not between the state and the individual, but rather between those on the “outposts” and the common people. It is not, however, solely a work of philosophical self-gratification.

In this instance, the denunciation is instead of the failure of society as a whole to hear any message contradictory to its desires, irrespective of what evils this may require, and similarly without regard for the sustainability of such a stance. The pollution, Dr. Thomas Stockmann argues, is not simply of the baths, but of society. He declares at a public meeting that he has discovered “all the sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.”

Such blatancy is not wholly uncharacteristic of Ibsen, his career being one of the more controversial of the great nineteenth century playwrights – undoubtedly also as a result of his popularity. Yet the point remains as an ostracised individual shouts his disillusionment and chagrin with society in this play, a point common to each of his five prose plays, composed from 1877, and termed by Ibsen the “drama of ideas”.

The context in which it was written must also be considered, quite apart from the period in time in which these works were composed. Ibsen’s plays were performed to audiences all across Europe, and resistance to these works varied from active censorship in Prussia (unified Germany) and England, to passive censorship – the play was eighteen months old before a theatre agreed to produce it – to public and media criticism. Ibsen’s plays attacked many aspects of the establishment, and, by his own acknowledgement, point to nihilism as an inherent human condition for many people, leading to their turmoil during the play, and subsequent social demise (or, more optimistically, their emancipation) at its conclusion.

France was perhaps one of the more liberal nations in Europe at this time, with the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century perhaps having the most effect upon their state. The subsequent revolutions that had swept across France had created a pervasive progressive mood, but there remained a societal structure rather in accordance with Ibsen’s portrayal of it, albeit with the addition of a middle class supportive of more liberal ideals. This notion of ‘class’ was, for many of the French people, a remnant of a time past which numerous revolutions had failed to abolish – or, more accurately, class distinctions. Artists such as Gustave Courbet criticised this continuing societal rift towards the middle of the century, through the portrayal of alms-giving. His work was not unique in this theme, with other artists such as Bonvin and Pils creating works depicting the same action in the same year, but Courbet’s The Village Maidens Giving Alms to a Guardian of Cattle (or The Village Maidens, 1852.) is unique in the manner it portrays such an act. The work is “an unvarnished, enormous and most unwelcome reminder of class distinctions in the provinces – a reminder that all was not smiling peasantry and reassuring folklore in Franche-Comté, but that there too, the petty bourgeoisie was setting itself apart from the, now threatening, proletariat – and furthermore, with the artist’s own sisters, clad in contemporary bonnets and dresses, rather than regional folk costume, playing the role of moneyed beneficience.”¹ This was, for the middle-classes of Paris, a rather unwelcome reflection of themselves that they sought to avoid recognition of.

The theme of such charity is continued in another of Courbet’s works, Beggar’s Alms (1868), which portrays a beggar granting a young boy a coin – significant, relative to the beggar’s means. The plight of the individual in both these works is portrayed as being of little consequence in an uncaring society – the poor are required to care for the poor, as an indifferent bourgeoisie continues life unburdened.

Burdening of the individual is another theme common to many works of the nineteenth century critical of society, a key example of this being Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The protagonist of this text, Tess Durbeyfield (or d’Urberville), bears the sin of a man who goes on unhindered by his act, unaware of its consequence, until he again meets Tess some years later, leading to his demise. Her marriage to Angel Clare is an unqualified failure, despite her continuing devotion to him until, finally, under the weight of her desperation, hope of his return elapses and she is compelled to reside with Alec d’Urberville in order to support her mother and siblings.

Without a husband, Tess d’Urberville is ‘incomplete’ – she is incapable, in the society in which she finds herself, of living independently, as a result of the expectations placed upon her. Society has caused this circumstance through the patriarchal expectation of ‘purity’ falling solely upon a woman with no means of recourse – Alec d’Urberville may be viewed as a motif of oppression rather than an actual character, as his persona is developed by its elements, rather than explicit characterisation. Conversely, Angel Clare is extensively developed so he is endeared in the mind of the responder, such that he exists as an individual as does Tess – his individual actions being guided by his own failure to meet society’s expectations (his lack of religious convictions), but he remains in conflict with this as he leaves Tess whom it is quite clear he loves from his unconscious actions on the first night of their marriage.

Ultimately, Hardy’s protagonist’s plight is the tragic consequence of a sin against her held by society to be a fault of her own. The responder is brought to value the protagonist as an individual in such a conflict through Hardy’s endearing portrayal of her in accordance with the first model outlined at the beginning of this critical essay, and it is thus that an awareness of her plight is raised.

¹ Nochlin, L. Realism. Penguin, 1971. Page 124.

I’ve got a draft due at the end of next week, but ironically I’m not worried about that so much. Of greater concern is the bundle of paper that has, for the past several months, sat relatively dormant atop a speaker in my room. So… umm… the glue is getting a workout this weekend. Note to self — buy glue.

Haphazard organisation is permitted, perhaps even encouraged — insert some rubbish about reflecting creativity here. I believe in sponteneity and a certain extent of anarchy in composition, but, in my experience, there’s little that can’t be actually coherently documented — in fact, ‘sponteneity’ generally has a catalyst, although our ability to recollect these circumstances will fail. Essentially, I’m going to prepare a document I have little faith in the authenticity of. But that’s okay, provided I do it well, and make it look substantial.

Gaps are creativity. Or something.

As for the draft that is due, I consider that to be more of a process that must be undertaken at some point, rather than anything of inherent importance. Which, it may be added, is something of an inversion of my perspective of some months ago when I first submitted a proposal. Initially, I believed the end product was ultimate, and the process was a necessary evil that must be undertaken to placate markers.

I suppose not that much has changed — I’ve just refined my viewpoints somewhat. The documentation of process is still a necessary evil, but I don’t feel like the end product is so vital. Don’t understand that as my saying “I’m demotivated”… I’m perfectly fine in terms of that.

I now respect process as necessary for the creation of complex ideas, and the shaping of direction from a bunch of (mostly) unrelated threads. Right now, however, I perceive the idea (“perceive” because it may change, of course) to have reached closure. I recognise the plot in its entirety. I could now talk any individual through the story, verbally, albeit perhaps without the same eloquence that may be achieved on paper, sans sponteneity.

Of course, the process of the writing itself refines, but… I don’t mind the idea as is. And that’s what the process is about. Ideas. Not tangible sentences, structure, semantics and implicit post-modernist (contrived) nuance, but concepts. Sometimes, concepts work better than their extrapolated cousins. Not, it must be said, in an underdeveloped way — but simply in terms of power of expression. And confidence.

I think that’s a big part of it, actually. Recognising you have an idea and only you can put it onto paper. That it won’t go anywhere from your mind, unless someone else thinks of it, at which point it ceases to be your idea. The confidence that justice can be done to a notion. Writing something that will be read, and that the author is prepared to have read. That it can be adequately represented — this is my greatest concern.

My unrelated threads are:

• a work placement
• new technology at school
• a web development proposal
• weblogs
• cynicism
• influential people/authors of related texts
• other “stuff” I’ve read, influencing style

A rather broad topic, perhaps, but useful, nonetheless. Warning — it’s fairly long.

Update: Now in pretty PDF form!

What is it?

The term ‘digital divide’ refers to the disparity in terms of access that has emerged following the advent of electronic information and communication mechanisms in the realm of consumer technology. Notably, this notion of ‘access’ applies to more than mere physical proximity and availability of resources — Mark Warschauer’s text, Technology and Social Inclusion¹ argues that the primary barrier to be overcome in terms of equitable access is not simply implementing the technology in the first instance, but implementing it in a way which does not simply view infrastructure as the first and only barrier to be overcome, instead heeding the issue of training and skills development as an inextricably connected aspect of the same problem.

In light of this, the ‘digital divide’ is beyond resolution through simply attaining (or donating, with regard to aid efforts) appropriate resources — ongoing, consistent efforts are required, at least for a period sufficient to rectify the situation in the medium term. That is to say, until industry and, perhaps more importantly, education, exist and are well established in whatever demographic the disparity was evident in (be that geographic, racial, or otherwise), such that this industry and education may be self-sufficient, to sustain and promote the growth of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy in that region.

Having identified that need (although perhaps not having justified it), what is required? Clearly, infrastructure is. In many places, however, this need has already been fulfilled through aid donations from ‘corporate citizens’, aid organisations, and governments — note this does not necessarily mean foreign governments — it is important not to view the digital divide purely geographically, and, even if it is, the geography of an individual state may create a inequitable climate in terms of access — Australian rural areas are an example of this, as recognised in the NET*Working 2002 Vocational Education conference².

It is now commonly understood in circles where the ‘digital divide’ is of holistic concern (that is, not as much the realm of electronic content creation — which may be aware of and actively working to rectify the divide, even though they are not aware of issues associated with it which do not directly impact their activities) that training and recognition of non-physical issues as necessarily a part of any approach to overcome said concern. Understanding this, then, provides necessary grounding for understanding what the ‘digital divide’ is.

Implications for society

The digital divide, viewed at a societal level, is not without a degree of ‘prior art’ that may be applied in order for objective, contextual, examination to occur. In this instance, the ‘prior art’ is found in the Industrial Revolution which occurred globally from the eighteenth century onwards — this is still occurring in many contemporary states, such as (provinces of) China and other nations (primarily in Asia).

What, then, is the picture presented from this ‘prior art’? Is the portrait painted one of bleak defeat and growing societal and economic disparity? Or, in this real-world scenario, is a resolution of this ‘divide’ something that is attainable, and, if it proceeds along the same lines as the Industrial Revolution, the natural outcome to which events shall point?

The Industrial Revolution first occurred in any real form in Britain and the United States, and then propagated to various European nations and, to a lesser extent, colonies, in the nineteenth century. Prior to this revolution, it has been noted that China and Japan were at a similar point in societal development to that of Western nations, however industrialisation did not occur there until much later. Reasons attributed to this have ranged from proximity and capacity for communication of ideas (as opposed to the type and rate of ideas and how rapidly these were being explored) to mere geography, however this is largely irrelevant to the present discussion. Of greater consequence is the Meiji Restoration in Japan in the late twentieth century, during which they achieved in less than 40 years an industrial capacity that had taken western nations two centuries to develop. If ever there were a success story with regard to rapid industrialisation, Meiji Japan was it.

Of course, industrialisation does not occur (and has not occurred) without significant societal strain. The Meiji Restoration in Japan resulted in significant social turmoil, especially in terms of their class-structured society, but also in the sudden concentration of population in urban areas. The time period in which this occurred, in contrast with that of Western nations prior to it, accentuated the effects of this change process — whilst industrialisation enabled international competitiveness (especially in terms of high-value silk exports) and economic benefits, the speed with which this was achieved lead to societal suffering greater than that experienced in Western nations, where urban facilities could be developed in step (or at least closer) with the influx of new population from rural areas.

Today, Japan is a globally recognised force economically and industrially, and a leading innovator in the fields of electronic and information technology device manufacture and adoption. It boasts one of the highest standards of living in the world, and one would be hard-pressed to find any remaining disadvantage with which Japan is burdened as a result of its (comparatively) late industrialisation.

Clearly, late adoption is not a barrier to subsequent achievement and even restoration of status. Rudyard Kipling’s Cities and Thrones and Powers may also be cited, if poetic rather than historical-political reference is desired — the point stands. Achievement at one point does not guarantee continued status, and late adoption does not require the continuation of any detriment that may be found in that, either.

A view of the Digital Divide should, perhaps, be akin to this — but possibly not. This ‘prior art’ has shaped the direction and nature of the world, as has the technological revolution which followed it — of which debate is now held. The world, though, has not yet fully industrialised. Nations may be developing, or simply not holding either the desire or the resources to develop — several small Pacific islands are an example of this. Ironically, some of these have achieved a status of technological advancement (albeit at a nation-state level, rather than for the general populace) without ever experiencing industrialisation, as a result of exploitation on an international level of their domestic legal systems — several such islands are now used for the purposes of money laundering, etc.

Inherently, this only serves to accentuate the point that ‘first achiever’ status is non-essential. Viewed holistically, however, this renders any such prior art inconsequential — nations did not achieve an industrialised state through foreign abuse of internal policy.

The digital divide, then, may be likened to past events and linked with past policies, yet these do not clearly encompass its scope or the manner in which the world must proceed in order to achieve resolution to the present situation — partially because there is no established path to trouble-free industrialisation, and as such it is impossible to ascertain such a path for progression in terms of ICT adoption and implementation. Clearly, nations that are generally considered ‘prosperous’ and ‘developed’ are more likely to fall on the ‘developed’ side of this digital divide, and, given wise internal policy, are likely to stay there through continuing change. Having said this, however, even within nations there are factors that may affect the access of specific groups to resources, such as geography (speaking of networks, for a moment, there is a clear limitation that arises in terms of the quality of resources, more than anything, as a result of physical distance) and regional demographics.

At a societal level, then, ICT adoption in terms of the emerging divide cannot simply be likened to a past revolution of technology, even in the manner discussed above. Viewed in greater detail, the potential parallel collapses even further, as the ICT “revolution” occurring at present is in terms of access to information, restructuring society and, ultimately, creating horizontal networks, which is perhaps the reverse of the outcome of the Industrial revolution (the creation of hierarchical networks) in its consequence, and entirely different in process — the Industrial revolution being about innovations in production and industry, resulting in the creation of a new class and a restructuring of society (evident in the social turmoil during the Meiji Restoration period in Japan)? through the process of ‘deskilling’ in which the capacity for independent thought is renounced, rather than actively promoted as with the freedom of expression inherently a part of this ICT revolution.

ICT can be seen to similarly result in the restructuring of society, however in doing this, it damages or alters class structures, and create a new degree of equality in the potential it gives for use to achieve common communication. Conversely, limited adoption of ICT, as evident in the digital divide, could be seen to have another effect — the widening of divisions within society, not into class, but into a new class system of access.

A common misconception would have this new class system being labelled as binary in nature (pun unintentional, undesired, and unrelated) — that is, that it could simply be split into two categories of ‘have’ and ‘have not’. Whilst cursory examination of the matter may result in this understanding of the divide, any attempt to delve deeper will quickly result in an understanding that there are many levels within this seemingly binary divide.

Many factors combine to form this multi-faceted divide, the main aspects being:

• Physical access to technology
• Quality of technology
• Usability of technology
• Internationalisation/localisation of technology (specifically software platforms)
• Access to training
• Presence and impact of regional information technology sector facilitating further personal and professional development in terms of IT usage

Clearly, these factors cannot be condensed into simple categories of ‘have’ and ‘have not’ — representation of these in terms of the degree of access on a linear scale would likewise fail — a two-dimensional modelling of a six-dimensional issue (those six being the key factors outlined above) is overly simplistic and probably not advantageous in its modelling of the problem.

At a societal level, the problems that result from this divide are widespread and complex, and often beyond any attempts at visual representation in this regard, if not in scope alone. Analysis of the impact of the digital divide, and indeed the impact of ICT generally, at a societal level, is possible in a variety of forms focussing upon a variety of specific issues, however, for the purposes of the task to which this essay relates (namely a creative piece exploring the aforementioned issue), it appears more prudent to examine the role of ICT in relation to the individual within the construct of society, rather than the same in relation to society as a standalone issue; this lends itself to creating a deeper understanding of the requirements of characterisation within this text, rather than simply exploring environmental requirements, themselves shaped largely by the experience and interactions of the individuals which exist within them.

Implications for the Individual

The individual within this new environment brought about by the (limited) proliferation of ICT resources is simultaneously burdened and empowered. In one sense, technology inherently comes with problems, as adoption of this becomes widespread; it is a collective action problem in which, for a time, the technology offers benefit to its users — but as adoption becomes widespread, the potential negative effects of this technology or action are realised. In an article entitled “Technology Bites Back“³, Dr Rob Sparrow from Monash University’s Centre for Human Bioethics cites the example of standing on seats at a rock concert to gain a better view: “The first person who does it gets a great view, but if everybody does it, no-body sees any better than before. They’re worse off, in fact, because they’re standing rather than sitting.”

The competitive advantage offered by mobile phones ten to fifteen years ago is now neutered by widespread adoption — and now an unprecedented expectation of constant connectivity and reaction/response exists, placing a burden upon, rather than granting an advantage to, many people. A similar situation is witnessed with more conventional electronic networks — the advent of email in the context of global commerce requires rapid responses to the point that consideration of the response does, in some circumstances, require notification that the message has been received and the responder is indeed considering the issues raised; customers have been heard to express dissatisfaction with email response times of greater than a day, compared to conventional (physical) mail, with which same-day responses are not the norm in a global context, and rare outside of a corporate environment in which physical proximity renders this realistic.

The individual on the ‘have side’ of the divide (protestations regarding categorisation stand, however, this terminology is retained with the traditional semantics attached to it held in mind, for the sake of brevity), then, is seen to be burdened with a need for immediacy in response to this change beyond that to which people of previous generations were subjected. This communication is, of course, at a peer-to-peer level, as opposed to any mass dissemination, although the same technologies could (can) be applied in this way (an example of this is evident in mass emailing, solicited or unsolicited), with varied effects.
It has been argued that, with the adoption of mass marketing techniques (not limited to those technologies relevant to the present discussion, although certainly including them), corporate and government entities have adopted a new form of language, which, though saying much, communicates very little and obfuscates what is communicated through the use of language “as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th Century French court“⁴- in other words, to their audiences at least, companies sound “hollow, flat, literally inhuman.“⁵

The Cluetrain Manifesto⁶ was a work published online in 1999 in the form of 95 Theses, and, in the foreword to the published text, The Cluetrain Manifesto: The end of business as usual⁷, the writer of this foreword, Thomas Petzinger, Jr. of The Wall Street Journal claims that book is “one of the first books written as a sequel to a Web site“⁸ — a claim probably not far from the truth. This wouldn’t be of significance, but for the content of what was written in both. Just as the author of this essay may chose to use an electronic form for the extension 2 task that he writes this for but does not, due to the inappropriateness of that form for the task at hand, The Cluetrain Manifesto’s message is one which requires an electronic form (in the first instance — the published book is an extension, not a basis) — for content, for distribution, for authenticity, and, ultimately, for the preservation of the ideals presented in the work itself.

What ideals, then, are presented? Authenticity is valued, certainly. Humanity is valued. The metaphysical construct of ‘the corporation’ is valued, but shunned in its present form — it is seen to have drifted away from its constituent’s nature, and into its own egocentric entity that fails to value the consumer. Open collaboration and discourse are valued. Interesting dialogue is valued, with authenticity, disclosure, directness, and a genuine voice.

The Cluetrain Manifesto challenges the corporate mindset regarding marketing in a post-industrial society, in which companies aim to ‘create relationships’. This is perhaps best addressed in point 25 of the manifesto, which reads “Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.” The advent of global electronic networks has simultaneously been a blessing and a curse for the individuals connected to them. In one sense, it has allowed for the creation of smarter, networked markets — in the words of manifesto, “Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy” (point 7). In another, the misunderstanding of the nature of these global networks has resulted in a curse; the burden of the faceless entity upon this new ‘market’ — notably not this new ‘community’ or ‘connected people’.

This sentiment is echoed in Meikle’s book, Future Active⁹, which models the Internet around two basic concepts, known throughout the text as version 1.0 and 2.0. Somewhat ironically, the older version (version 1.0) is perceived to be the better model, with version 2.0 misunderstanding and corrupting the former. Examples are given throughout the work, which cites the success of Amazon.com as a byproduct of its version 1.0 nature, despite it being a commercial entity. Simply, version 1.0 refers to the pre-commercialisation Internet of open military-academic communication, extending forwards to the opening of the Internet to the public, but essentially prior to any overwhelming commercialisation of the Internet; version 1.0 is about open publishing and discourse.

Version 2.0, however, is closed publishing. It’s corporate websites, flashy reports, stuff-designed-for-print-but-stuck-online-anyway, and content and websites that generally fail to recognise the collaborative potential of the medium, instead viewing it as a network that is a market, rather than a network that is a meeting place. Amazon.com is about pre-developed content with commercial presentation, but is successful (according to Meikle’s text) due to its creation of a community around its products, in the form of allowing users to comment on books/products and leave reviews — for free, in recognition of the pulling power of this open publishing that people flock to.
The Internet, for companies that don’t understand the importance of this “version 1.0″ model, is just an extension of another form of mass media — without recognising that, here at least, their ‘target market’ is free to switch to any ‘channel’ they wish — and the Internet is rich enough in content that this is of no substantial detriment to the targeted user, unlike its traditional broadcast counterparts.

The Internet, then, is another avenue for forced ‘broadcast’ (top down) communication, if this is how corporate entities perceive it. This communication is often very much in the same style, if in a different form, from more conventional broadcast communication — that is, still top down, still non-interactive, still “hollow, flat, literally inhuman”? but the Internet is more than this, and “markets” (correctly people) understand that — “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”. With this in mind, use of the Internet as though it were simply another form of ‘mass media’ is, in most instances, misguided (exceptions being electronic presences of existing publications, specifically news sources — although these too would do well to permit a degree of interaction, a good example of this being the discussion features on CNet news.com and, to a lesser extent, some articles on the SMH.com.au website) and backwards-thinking. Meikle’s Future Active proposes that activism is “backing into the future“¹⁰, applying old techniques and mechanisms to a new environment (the web) and then subsequently changing accordingly — not the other way around. This is equally true of the majority of electronic news outlets, and, as is beginning to be realised, with corporate websites such as englishcut.com¹¹ adopting a different mindset in the nature of their electronic presence, as the significance of open publishing and ‘version 1.0′ frameworks is realised.

With the recognition of the importance of this different mode of publishing, the present (overwhelming redundant) manner that many businesses currently utilise for all electronic communiqués will be seen to subside, to be replaced by more open, honest discourse between business, employee and customer, in a way that views “the Internet” as its own medium, not simply “TV with a buy button“¹².

What does this mean in terms of the digital divide, then? Before the paradigm shift in the way corporations approached and thought about this new medium, in terms of business-to-consumer or business-to-employee communication, the “have not” group weren’t, in terms of communication, missing out on anything significant. In fact, the communication was so facile, so trite, and so backwards looking that the “have not” group would find a better experience in television, print media, or simply reality itself. The Cluetrain Manifesto book carries throughout a “market” metaphor for the Internet — it brings people together, not as a target market, or any business-based understanding of the term, but rather as with markets in the most basic sense — a gathering of people to share, to converse, to exist in a common environment where not only goods are traded, but also stories and experience.

This, it is argued, is what an open Internet looks like.

Canadian comedy group Three Dead Trolls¹³ have satirically described ‘multimedia’ as being “just like normal media, but not as good!“¹⁴. Multimedia is like “owning a TV that’s three inches wide“¹⁵. In a way, that’s how many aspects of the Internet are currently presented. Many content authors don’t appreciate or understand how “multimedia” can be appropriately applied, and the overall effect is a far cry from cohesive, consistent, or usable. And yet people use it anyway, immerse themselves in it, despite its shortcomings.

What of this divide then? If, despite the imperfections of the medium and (more significantly) its applications, people who can access this resource by their volition elect to — then these imperfections are outweighed by the perceived advantages the medium offers. Apparently.

Is the value misplaced? Is the implementation of this seemingly empowering technology such that the ‘empowering’ is lost and the ‘technology’ is a ruling influence? The timeless question resounds — is technology serving us, or is the reverse true?

Given sufficient access to technology, the answers to all these questions is no. The Internet can be used for empowerment, for collaboration, as a global ‘marketplace’ (in both a commercial and a social sense) and to serve humanity socially — it is not purely a military tool, or a commercial tool, but a tool for communication in an altruistic sense sans any ulterior motive — simply, communication for the sake of discourse, existence in a social network, connectivity within this ‘web’.

Having said that, however, the effects of the digital divide on the individual are wide-ranging, depending on the social context and the degree to which access exists. Mark Warschauer’s book, Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide¹⁶, identifies a scenario where partial ‘access’ to technology results in a worsened situation than that which existed prior to the provision of technology in the first instance. By ‘access’, it is important to remember that this term must not be solely applied to physical access to technology — training, knowledge, ability (especially motor skills and physical disabilities), usability and internationalisation all constitute ‘access’, in this context.

Warschauer presents the circumstance of a village in an Asian nation (probably India, this example is recalled from memory) where an Internet access point had been installed by some benefactor, who freely provided the necessary physical resources for this to occur. Ongoing access fees may or may not have been provided for, but that is not wholly relevant — the donation was futile because of the overwhelming technology illiteracy in the area, and the failure of this donation to encompass any degree of training. Once installed, the primary use of this newly installed technology was not communication and open discourse, but instead found local children using this resource for playing games online.

Similar situations exist closer to home — many local libraries in New South Wales now provide free Internet access to their members, often without formal training provided as well. The author has witnessed e-learning initiatives in such environments fall to similar fates as the Indian scenario above, with children finding online games more engaging than often stale ‘interactive learning material’ — as a result of the presentation, not the content itself.

Neither of these scenarios results in the breaking down of boundaries, or the opening of new and exciting discourse — instead, the technology places a burden upon the community in terms of maintenance, ongoing costs, and initial investment for little or no tangible — or intangible! — return, and the slave/master relationship between humanity and its technology turns, in this case, against humanity.

What ICT isn’t

ICT isn’t a magic pill for the problems of industrialisation. Industrialisation still has to occur; because ICT is dependant upon the infrastructure that industrialisation develops to exist (not just the technology itself in a historical framework, but the electricity to operate the technology, and the physical networks used to connect it!), and cannot come before the other.

ICT isn’t a magic pill for the problems of poverty. It creates industry, and arguably higher standards of living — but the real problems of population concentration versus arable land and other physical constraints will mean this emancipation from certain influences is not absolute in its unburdening? although, ICT in the means it provides the for expression of individual thought, feeling, and voice is such that poverty as a result of political situations may, potentially, be overcome or at least challenged in a way previously unprecedented — an example of this is the recent 2004 election in the United States, covered by ‘blogs’ (web logs, or personal journals) so extensively that, following the election, bills have been proposed¹⁷ to amend laws concerning journalism and the press to include web logs, granting similar rights — and, more importantly, censorship — as that which conventional media is subject to.

ICT isn’t a magic pill for the problems of distance. If anything, it is seen to exacerbate them, as physical locale directly influences availability and subsequent adoption of technology, ultimately resulting in inequality and the broadening of the social divide between people. ICT alters the form and style of communication used, and the early/late adoption rift results in the development of skills to manage this being fragmented between groups, influencing the way in which groups can relate to each other both in the medium used, and in the language used within the confines of that medium — that is to say, stylistically, the feel of communications and the way in which these are written, spoken or otherwise presented alter, based on the author’s experience with different modes of communication. The writing conventions of personal e-mail, for example, are substantially different from those used in the writing of most letters, in its inherently conversational tone merged with the written word and, in some instances, the alteration of language itself in terms of spelling, use of jargon (‘emoticons’ are included in this), and abbreviations not commonly used outside the context of this form of electronic communiqué — reflected, conversely, in other writing by users of said technology, in which adoption of the different language features common to electronic forms of communication are seen to transcend this, and permeate other writings — the use of emoticons and/or abbreviations such as ‘LOL’ (a commonly used abbreviation for ‘laugh out loud’, generally not used in a literal sense, but simply to denote some degree of humour) in letters, for example, or even in speech (albeit to a lesser extent, and only with some terms).

What the divide means

Such is this change in communication as a result of the common adoption of this new media form in groups of people on the ‘have’ side of the divide, that the way in which they communicate is substantially altered to the point of obfuscation of meaning and general incomprehensibility. As with generational differences in language, the digital divide has introduced (and continues to perpetrate) a further gap linguistically, as well as in terms of the mode and form of communication used, assuming resources even exist to receive information published electronically.

At an individual level, this prevents exposure to a diverse range of writing and content created and disseminated electronically — and, at the stage when this exposure and the ‘bridging of the divide’ becomes feasible at some (as yet undetermined) point in the future, there still remains a cultural and communicative gap — some would cite Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock¹⁸ to highlight the possible effects of this gap, once ‘bridged’. Notably, this ‘bridging’ is an un-real concept — whilst the circumstances surrounding the divide may be mitigated, the effects of the divide are longer lasting, at least for a generation, and potentially longer; for example, unemployment propagates through generations in a cyclic manner, as sociologists have observed is the case in certain areas — a contemporary example being parts of Macquarie Fields. The digital divide is perhaps not necessarily as extreme in consequence as the cyclic unemployment in Macquarie Fields, although, arguably, the divide may lead to unemployment as a result of the new skills it requires (perhaps reversing the trend instigated by the Industrial Revolution towards ‘deskilling’), and this unemployment may continue across generations if appropriate training is not available and/or offered to those still lacking in skills.

Of course, communication and training barriers may not necessarily be an issue — the divide holds a lesser relevance to those employed in primary industries, for example. Having said this, changes in technology (not communications-related) have also resulted in changes in requisite skills for employment in primary industry areas — perhaps requiring an understanding of technology to function in a competitive environment, for example, the use of software to determine appropriate use of chemicals, etc.

Not only this, but ICT itself is relevant to these primary industries for the purposes of receiving communications of the requirements of customers, as well as communication of changes in technology for the basic means of production — simply, ‘keeping on top of’ the latest industry developments. This is particularly relevant to the agricultural aspect of primary industry, with mining and logging often already connected to a larger parent company that is likely to already have ICT systems in place for the purposes of such communications.

At an individual level, the divide has the potential to result in communication differences greater than the generational communication gap, as language and the application of language changes, and new forms and modes of expression are adopted on a large scale. The ‘bridging’ of the divide allows this nuance to be realised, as the individual struggles to comprehend and adapt to this different means of communication — Toffler’s concept of “future shock”; an example of which has been observed at the University of Sydney’s Facilities Management department¹⁹, which has, at some point in the last several years, seen the introduction of ICT in order to audit and manage activities internally. The primary users of this ICT infrastructure are tradespeople, many of who do not use computers at home, or had not previously used them in the workplace — the workplace training co-ordinator²⁰ at Facilities Management commented on the widespread frustration and difficult transition experienced; and this, in an environment in which appropriate training is provided. “Future shock” is a reality, which, especially in light of the ICT revolution, is increasingly relevant in today’s society, both locally and on a global scale.

Entities and society as a whole faces this revolution as its constituents experience and capacity to deal with change mandates — that is to say, similar challenges are presented to society as with the individual, with cumulative effect playing a role in shaping the society into the future. Requirements for training, such that lasting change can occur, must be met for the divide to be bridged, and, to avoid the linguistic aspects of this gap broadening further, this should occur in a timely manner, before this secondary divide of consequence is permitted to take hold and instigate cyclic disadvantage. The digital divide is but a descriptor for the first effect of a circumstance with consequences far beyond this original manifestation.

References

1. Warschauer, M. Technology and Social Inclusion. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press. October 2004.
2. http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/nw2002/extras/digitaldivide.pdf – references to Ngaanyatjara Lands
3. “Icon” technology section, SMH, April 9, 2005
4. The Cluetrain Manifesto, http://www.cluetrain.com/ point 15.
5. Ibid. point 14
6. http://www.cluetrain.com/, see also ref. 7, p.xi
7. Locke, C., Levine, R. et al. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The end of business as usual. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus. 2000.
8. Ibid. p. iv
9. Meikle, G. (Edited by Wark, M.) Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet.
10. Ibid. p. 14
11. Macleod, H., Mahon, T. English Cut: Bespoke Savile Row tailors. 2005. < http://www.englishcut.com/ >
12. Locke, C., Levine, R. et al. The Cluetrain Manifesto: The end of business as usual. p.15
13. http://www.deadtroll.com/
14. Ibid. “How to Buy a Computer” recording. Also http://www.ampcast.com/music/22488/artist.php
15. Ibid.
16. Warschauer, M. Technology and Social Inclusion.
17. McCullagh, D. Bloggers narrowly dodge federal crackdown. 24 Mar. 2005. CNET News.com. 14 Apr. 2005 < http://news.com.com/Bloggers+narrowly+dodge+federal+crackdown/2100-1028_3-5635724.html >
18. Toffler, A. Future Shock: A study of mass bewilderment in the face of accelerating change. London: The Bodley Head Ltd. 1970.
19. The author of this essay worked at the Facilities Management Office at the University of Sydney in an IT capacity on a work placement, for a period of time in 2004, during which employees whose profession was in their trade, rather than in management or an ICT role, expressed frustration at the technology which they were required to use for the management aspects of their job.
20. Barbara Achilles, also the work placement co-ordinator.

Credit for these photos to Sarah Doyle, author of the play, using my camera.

Those who aren’t unfortunate enough to be stuck using Internet Explorer would have possibly appreciated the footer for looking kind of snazzy… for the benefit of those poor sods stuck with IE, here are some screenshots of the footer in various browsers.

Firefox 1.0PR

Netscape 7.2

Opera

Konqueror

I’m a fan of the way Opera handles it, personally, but I use Firefox 1.0PR at the minute for day-to-day stuff. Of course, if you’re using Internet Explorer, it should still be perfectly visible, but also boring and generally crap. Switch over! If, of course, you can’t, for one reason or another, then my sympathies to you. If you choose not to, no such apology is forthcoming! (yes, I know, personal preference… Pfft!)

Aside from the purely aesthetic, of course, there is a reason for these changes. Not for my tinkering, but for the display and presentation of content. There’s a new license in effect, you see. Well, actually, it was probably always in effect, I just never got around to making it public — the Creative Commons license this website is now formally under is that which I’d planned to use since the inception of this version of the website. So, there we go. Just for the sake of convenience, I’ve reproduced (in text-only form) the Creative Commons deed human-readable summary here.

You are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
• Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

There we go. Please, enjoy my content. You’re free to do whatever you want to it, within those constraints, but it’d be nice if you told me just so I can go take a look. That’s not a requirement of the license, of course, but it’s something I think would be nice.

If you wish to use content here for commercial purposes, or without the requirement of attribution, feel free to get in touch to discuss licensing.

Note that this licensing does not apply to content otherwise marked.

Just out of curiosity, who ARE you?  I’m looking at the Netscape user/users who have accounted for 60% of my traffic thus far this month.  I’m impressed.  I thought Netscape was dead, but evidently not.  Well.  Maybe it is.  But then, at least the Un-Dead browser users are coming and visiting my website.  The browsers are un-dead, that is, not the users.  Although they may be as well.  Who knows… write if you’re an un-dead user visiting this website, okay?

An un-dead user running Netscape, especially.  You know what’s REALLY interesting?  59.4% of the users are running an OLD OLD OLD ugly version of Netscape.  Well, okay, so it’s not that old.  But 6.2.1 is getting mildly ancient for many people to be using, I would think.  At least it isn’t 4.x — I don’t know how nice that would play with all the CSS in these parts — not that it really matters… If it can’t do it, the website is semantically acceptable when displayed as plain text in linear form.  Don’t believe me?  Load up your favourite WAP browser, and assuming there isn’t anything particularly quirky on my front page at that point in time, it should display plenty fine.

Yes.  So.  About that assessment.  I’m typing this in a humble text editor, simply so I don’t have to worry about session times, and will just copy and paste in when I’m done, however many hours that may take, heh.

It all began on Monday afternoon this week (it’s only this week for another 3 hours 42 minutes as I type this — okay, okay, enough distractions!), as I arrived (late, due to a certain concerts un-punctuality… or something) to Extension English to be told that our teacher (Mrs. Christie) had marked most of the assessments, but there were a handful remaining; we would not have them returned that day, however we were welcome to collect them when they became available at 8 a.m. the morning following from reception in BBC.  That said, she wanted to read out some of them which she had already marked to the class.

The “class combination” thing happened, as it sometimes does, and we were all (at least, I was, and others also made snide remarks to the same effect) anticipating Mrs. Crump launching into a power-trip driven tirade about… whatever it is that lady speaks about (I’ve never quite bothered to ascertain that one).  That didn’t happen: both classes were combined so that she (Mrs. Christie, not the cats mother) could comment on the assessments, and read out some of them to the class(I’ll drop the “es” — the plural is implied from here on in, okay?).

Alex McSkimming’s story was read out (title unrecalled, plot was driven by real-world events; apparently, the association between religious symbology, specifically Christian symbols, and Vampires — or at least the repulsion of — came about as a result of the Churches policy with regard to the Black Plague.  I really want to read it again, for the contextual explanation and reflection as much as for the story itself), and then another — Andrew Garrett’s composition, reflecting on the necessity of Blood for life — it wasn’t as Renfield-ish as it sounds — it was drawing (not drawing blood!) parallels between the Blood Bank as a necessary component of society for the preservation of life, and Vampires consumption of Blood as necessary for the continuation of THEIR life.  Mine was next.  At least, the first draft of mine was next.

She lifted the folder, and flipped to the story.  The coversheet fell into my view;  I asked “Are you sure you want to read that version out?  That’s my first draft, judging from the cover sheet…”.  She was somewhat confused… “Oh, so it is… I hope I didn’t mark you on that one!”  Insert nervous laughter from all parties here.  The story was laid down, and she continued to speak about something else.  I was assured that she’d look at it, and let me know the following morning — although she was “sure” she hadn’t.

8 a.m. came and went.  I didn’t get to school until 8:20, but from talking to other people, I don’t think that many went and even tried to get theirs back in the morning.  Mrs. Christie came downstairs (or maybe not… I don’t know where her office lies) when called, and…

Yeah.  I can’t remember how she phrased it.  My re-telling of the sequence of events has always begun with “Guess what!”.  I’d already guessed, of course — the glass is half empty.  Do you know what really bites about the whole thing at this point?  She’d just told me how much she liked my draft, and what mark I was to get for it.  Now, there are certain marks which… aren’t conducive to making students want a remark.  This was one of them.  ANYWAY.  She was to re-examine the final copy, and I was to return at recess.

Done.

I return at recess to be told that Alanna has enquired/complained/tortured small animals about why she got the mark she did, and as such the return of all as-yet-unreleased assessments was on hold as miscellaneous teachers took another look at the assessments.

That’s alright.  I can deal with that.  I’m not hanging out for a mark or anything here.

Lunch. I return, to be informed by Mrs. Court (the receptionist in BBC) that all the assessments were in a pile here.  There was a gesture, too ;).  Of course, mine wasn’t.  It was in a distinctive red folder, and was at a glance evidently not there.  I flipped through the pile anyway, before saying “Could you please call Mrs. Christie again?”

And so, again, she came from ThatPlaceWhereMrs.Christie’sOfficeIs™ to reception.  Aaand mine hadn’t been marked, due to a lack of free classes for her that day, or something.  I was to return that afternoon, again.

Afternoon came, as did I.  I was expelled by the Dean of the Senior College.  Seriously!  Apparently I’d been loitering in reception too much, or something.  Mrs. Earle is great fun ;)  Anyway.  It is at this point where I begin to tire telling the story, because up until now, the timeframe looked as though the whole thing would be resolved in a day.  Nope!

She arrived, and we sat down.  Actually, she arrived, said “I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, can you come back in 10″, I made a phone call, walked around mindlessly for a bit, then came back, and THEN we sat down.  But I digress (again).  In her reading of the weighty tome (where weighty = probably less than 100 grams), she has unveiled a dark and powerful secret.  So Un-Dead was my story, that two pages had arisen, and, unaided, made their escape (ess-ka-pey!) from the clutches of the English department!  Or maybe I failed to submit it, or she lost it.  Hey, one of the above will do — personally, I’m more excited about the first explanation.

Having read the document in its entirety, she decided that my story had regressed in clarity (at least, certainly within the first section) between the first and second drafts.  You know what?  I could have told you that!  Something to do with unfathomable word limits?  Nah.  But that’s cool.  I’ll drop it.  I went 700 words over, so I can’t complain too much.  I’ll have a further rant about clarity and her/the departments marking schemes in a while — for now, there are other things to address.

Now, the coversheet and first page of the final draft were somewhat AWOL — or with leave, whatever.  At this point, she asked a question which I am still getting over — this, ladies and gentlemen, is a full 4 days (or is it 5?  Meh, I’m doing extension ENGLISH, not MATHS!) on, and I have yet to START moving on past this question.  It was, without a doubt, the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard a teacher say.

“Now, should I give you nineteen, or twenty for this?  What do you think you deserve?”

I’m sorry, you just DON’T ask a student that.  Regardless as to whether or not you believe they would give an appropriate answer or not.  Personally, I don’t think ANYONE should EVER get “full marks” in any subjectively marked subject (because, despite the best efforts of the Board of Studies to destroy literature and define marking as neat, easy, criteria-based “tick-a-box” marking, that isn’t the way it works.  That is something I would really struggle with as a teacher, I think…) at the best of times, simply because there is no such thing as a perfect text.  There is that, and then there is my desire to achieve — but asking for 20 doesn’t provide a sense of achievement, anyway.

Perhaps that was the motive behind the question?  Whether I answered “nineteen” or “twenty”, the result was the same — my mark, as perceived by myself, had decreased.  I said “I’m not answering that, I can’t answer that objectively — can I bring in a reprint of those pages tomorrow, so that you can re-mark it?”.

What happened next was nearly as astounding.  Having just explained why I had lost the mark, concern was voiced that I may take this opportunity to edit the first page appropriately, in order to regain the mark.  “Can I trust you not to change it?”.  I don’t remember what I said now.  Whether it was “That’s up to you” or “Hang on, you just asked me what I should get for my own work, and yet you don’t trust me to make a reprint, even though my editing, IF ANY would have to be perfect to the point that the sentence which was continued on page two of the text flowed as though no change on the first page had occurred at all?  I’m sorry, please, give, me twenty or nineteen right now as you wish.” I honestly couldn’t say.  Technically, editing so that the first page flowed into the second seamlessly would have been near impossible.  AND, that’s assuming I could be bothered.  I’m sorry, but I like to think I have more of a life than that (not to mention morality and a sense of values).

Whatever I said, the outcome was she was willing to let me bring in a reprint the following day.

This is Wednesday:
I come to school, drop the printout at reception asking that it be given to Mrs. Christie as was convenient, and return in the afternoon.  It hasn’t been marked.

Thursday comes.  I seize Mrs. Christie in the corridor, and am informed I have 19 as a final mark.  I am happy.  I have closure.  I also have a mark of 95% for a work which really doesn’t deserve even that (especially considering my complete violation of any concerns of brevity, with my FINAL coming in at 1700ish, and the first draft sitting at a lovely 2000).

I still haven’t bothered to retrieve my physical copy, that can wait until next Tuesday’s lesson.

Now that the recounting is over, and heads are still spinning, I’m going to launch into a tirade.

CLEAR!!!

Okay.  There are a few things.  Firstly, the subject of perfect marks.  I addressed it before, but since this is where I’m venting about all the things I think are wrong with it, it needs to be mentioned (at least briefly) again.

IT
SHOULD
NEVER
HAPPEN
in subjective subjects.

Literature is not mathematical, it is not scientific.  It is abstract, free, more beautiful than mathematics — endless scope for rigid structure or disjointed abstraction is permitted within its bounds, and this is something no institution should even think of trying to break down into simple criterions.

Why?  Because, for one, being (potentially) that abstract, there is an incredibly narrow probability of pre-emptively creating criteria to suit the work which shall be submitted.  Additionally, the assignment of marks to (especially) creative works is something which is just another part contributing towards the score-obsessed high school culture which exists in NSW (and probably the rest of the world) in the senior years today.

The need for quantification is recognised, however this cannot be broadly applied to things such as it is now!

I’ll leave that where it is, else this post may double in length again.

My second… objection towards this whole thing is about the REASONS my first draft scored perfectly.

It wasn’t perfect!  Previous comments aside, I haven’t seen the criteria, so this is all “speculation” (O! Look what they have done to us! The author speculates upon his own work, as the BoS looks over us and gloats!).  But there were at least FOUR PRINTED PAGES which WERE INCLUDED with my submitted assessment CLEARLY DOCUMENTING AND OUTLINING THE NEED FOR CHANGES IN the first draft!  Comments were included both from myself (which is acceptably discounted, as any comments should be included in reflections, but this was not), Alec Sewell, and Sam Holloway!

Grammar, structure, spelling, clarity, fragmentation, and presentation of concepts was (in my opinion) much better executed in the proceeding edits than in the original.  And I’m not the only one to think so.

The implication of this is somewhat disturbing.  Either the original edit (1st draft) was not read as the original when the mark was assigned — that is, prior to losing the first two pages of the final copy (yes, that was an accusation — I don’t know if it was me or her, but I’m fairly sure I submitted it), it was marked, and scored 20 — or the original edit was mismarked to the extent that DOCUMENTED errors were overlooked.

Either way, and in both my complaints, a “perfect mark” is clearly of little significance where such errors may abound unseen, undetected, and apparently unimportantly.  The more I think about it, the more I want to see this criteria sheet.  I have a feeling my suspicions about the ineffectiveness of subjective “tick-a-box” marking may have just been confirmed, or at least strengthened…

as such suspicions are merely subjective, of course. ;)