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Degrading Gracefully
One thing I wanted to add to my most recent post critiquing certain elements of the neo-primitivist or green anarchist movement: in web design, there is a concept referred to as “degrading gracefully” which means that you design websites with older browsers in mind. In other words, you code your website in such a way that the fastest and latest browsers will interpret it correctly. But you also recognize that only a small percentage have the fastest latest browser. Most people are somewhere in the middle and some people are using old dinosaurs. If your purpose in building a website is communicating with these people, you have to build it so that you can succesfully communicate with ALL these people, no matter their browsing platform.
So you build into your code structures which will maintain themselves despite degradation into older and older browsers. Things will look broken, but they will break in such a way that they will still look usable, and it will not just be some huge mess that is seen by an old lady surfing the web in a nursing home.
I believe this principle of designing with degradation in mind urgently needs to be incorporated into the creation of new philosophies and movements. We can’t only focus on communicating with the people who “get” the subtlety and the nuance and what you really mean. But you also have to build with an eye towards those people who are going to misinterpret and screw up your perfectly crafted system. Because those people are by and large the biggest group out there and if you want to communicate effectively, you need to accomodate their needs.
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September 15th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Right, but to continue the metaphor, maybe the type of information I’m conveying — let’s say flash — is not recognized by some browsers; it’d be necessary for those browsers to be “upgraded” by their users.
September 15th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Which is part of why I, as a designer, have never adopted Flash into my work, because I do not believe it is necessary or desirable to force my audience into such a position. As a business person, you want to remove impediments to action in your target audiences, not increase them.
By the same token though, Flash has been upgraded itself to make use of XML data which, if programmed correctly, can and should be usable in other formats that degrade gracefully…
September 15th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
You mentioned in an earlier post how a beautiful philosophy will always be misappropriated by the ham-handed and ignorant. I don’t see how making your thinking more accessible would help this. I want the user to upgrade his browser to flash so he can see what I made as it is. If I “down-grade” (for lack of a better phrase) my work by turning a flash animation into an animated gif, he’s not going to see it how I intended it; in fact, he’ll miss big chunks of it (like sound), and maybe even get the entirely wrong idea.
September 15th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Yeah I totally get what you’re saying and agree. That’s the problem with analogies and words a lot of times. I think both things and don’t so much see them as being exclusive. I will also freely admit to not knowing and to making this up as I go along.
September 15th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
PS. I just really hate Flash! Although I just thought of a loophole to your analogy-trap. Have you ever been to a website which offers both a Flash version and an HTML version?
September 15th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
yes, and to undermine my own metaphor, I always click on html because it’s pretty much the same shit any way =P
September 15th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Stupid metaphors!
I also dislike Flash because it locks text and images within its proprietary format. At least when it’s not done well. I frankly don’t totally get why Flash hasn’t died out or been replaced by something more robust yet. It is seriously so 1998!
September 15th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
I’m coming of the opinion that we should consider what the hermetic/mystery schools did; by using symbolism, different languages, and other such means of encoding information, they forced the potential user to install a whole a new operating system, and not just a different one, but a more sophisticated one — perhaps even alien. It’s crazy to think of all the different ways we can catalogue the information we’re exposed to.
Leaving the metaphor, I think there’s a lot to be said for the traditional, occult method of eluding the easy grasp of the intellect and engaging the intuition through symbolism rather than argumentation.
September 16th, 2006 at 4:17 am
Can’t symbolism be grasped through argumentation though? Or rather, can’t argumentation be used to clear the ground in which symbolic seeds can take route?
September 16th, 2006 at 5:32 am
My understanding of symbolism is that it’s a communication with the primal mind — thus, instinctive. The depth of your intuitive vision is what determines the depth of the symbol. True power often lies in what is unsaid or just insinuated, because the latent contents of the perciever are what fills in the blanks. Lord help someone possessed by “mystique”, they may become a slave to that symbol in its vast and unspecified implications. At any rate, you can encode the feeling of your philosophy with specific symbols, if the viewer is able to tune into your frequency, he’ll have a more immediate and intimate understanding, without you having to corral your philosophy into words which are unyielding and onerous, at times.
However, there isn’t much tolerance for ambiguity in today’s debates; we’re expected to say what we mean, but feelings lose a lot in their transition to words. Broader stroaks are not precise, but they encompass more area.
But you cannot convey yourself in esoteric symbolism unless the person on the other end is a willing participant. It requires the working of imaginations at both ends.
Not sure how that wouldn’t just obfuscate things further, unless you can tell me what you’re thinking of in particular.
I’m tired — sorry if this isn’t coherent
September 16th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
I guess what I mean is that we can use intellect to clear away the wreckage. Good conversations clear the mind of debris and churn up the soil underneath. It’s not generally acceptable to say so in modern spiritual dialogue, but I feel like I’ve benefited tremendously from this kind of intellectual argumentation. But I’ve also managed to do it in such a way where arguments overlap and contradict and modulate; they are more alive. You don’t just accept and stop, you revise and continue trying all along the way. I think it has to do with focusing on generating questions than generating answers…
Make more sense?