don’t explain

As perhaps a bit of a recursive learning experience, I have been encouraged to review the previous musings of one of my course ancestors in the form of taking a figurative walk around their blog. In keeping with the concept of the “Native,” I have chosen the blog of a friend of mine, Sunil Garg. I am hoping that my personal experience with him will provide a better context with which to examine the Amsterdam-related segment of his blog.

As the Honors Amsterdam 2007 blog linked to Sunil’s main page and not the more relevant Amsterdam material, I was forced to dig through the navigation and search for the “amsterdam” tag. In doing so, I also caught a glance at the rest of his tags in the form of his tag cloud which, as can be seen to the left, visualizes the tags which Sunil has labeled his posts with. In this cloud, the size of the tags indicate the frequency of their use. I am not sure if it was the subconscious influence of having read Lynch’s study or an act of my own volition, but I immediately began attempting to organize the cloud in terms of my current task, mentally sorting them into the categories of “potentially Amsterdam related” and “likely irrelevant.” What then immediately struck me is that the majority of the content of his blog is amsterdam related, as the amsterdam and studyabroad tags are far and away the largest tags. Delving deeper, I ignore the technology and internet tags, knowing that these are unrelated interests of his, and confirm that wayfinding was a large part of his studies, along with research on society and culture. Having satisfied my curiosity, I finally click through to the Amsterdam tag to review the content of his posts.

Before arriving at content, however, the eye comes across the title of his posts, which are similar to mine and contrast with that of some of my classmates in their more abstract and less academic nature – “Tolerance and Submission” instead of “Amsterdam – Assignment number one” and the like. This, along with the introduction concluding with “[this] marks the first post in a series of what I hope to be many,” is indicative of a certain excitement about the subject, rather than the requirements of a course.

My next observation is that Sunil does extensive research beyond the requirements of the course and prompt before posting, as evidenced by his abundant links off to various sources to support his statements. This is an interesting take on the assignments he was asked to do, bringing in the viewpoints of people other than himself to strengthen his arguments, either through agreement or dissent. This pattern is much more familiar to the format of a blog than to the format of a classroom assignment, indicating to me his native environment.

My final major observation that is general enough to note in this brief post is the lack of photos decorating Sunil’s posts. Whereas most of his regular writing involves at least one image accompanying the text, only two of his Amsterdam posts involve images. This decided lack of images was a bit disquieting, as again the inclusion of images is a standard practice when posting on a blog.

As part of an ongoing dual-use of this blog, I will be posting various musings in preparation of a study-abroad to Amsterdam. Eventually I am going to rework the backend guts of this blog such that all Amsterdam content falls into its own separate category and feed, but that is for later. For now, let us consider the revealing study of close-reading a perhaps common email:

The subject is “Deadline: Midnight tonight.” While email subjects are, by convention, supposed to inform the recipient of the specific contents enclosed within, such that the importance and relevance of the mail may be determined without actually reading it, this email deliberately eschews transparency for ambiguity, leaving me with no choice but to open it to discern its contents. The urgency and set timeframe magnifies this effect.

The email opens with “Friend.” These people have my first name on file given my previous donation, and have used it in mailings past, so it’s of importance that they chose not to use it for this mailing. Given the ease by which electronic mass-mailings today can insert your name into correspondences, the use of the greeting “Friend” seems almost more personal, against conventional wisdom — and given the soon-to-be-revealed nature of this email, a personal tone is important to these peoples’ cause. There is a space between the greeting “Friend” and the following punctuation “–” which draws attention to this word choice.

The first body line reveals all. Concise without being impersonal (referring directly in second person to the reader multiple times), the sentence remedies all the vagaries of the subject line by stating in a lone sentence comprising a lone paragraph the mission statement of this lengthy email. Its content is complete enough to persuade immediately those who understand its implications to do its bidding with no further questions or reading required, short enough to inform the disinterested to turn away, and intriguing enough to push the interested on. The second paragraph — also a single sentence — reinforces this last point.

The content of the email follows with several extremely short paragraphs, each drilling into further and further background and generality from the incredibly precise topic of the opening line, providing as the first line did progressively wider information for the curious and numerous jumping-off points for those who have decided whether to enact upon the call of the email to cease reading.

This series culminates with two final calls. The first addresses the direct implications of the donation you will be making to the campaign; the voice of the paragraph makes no question out of whether or not the reader will in fact enact upon the email, as if to project into the reader’s mind this call. The implications listed are all secondary to the potential donor, enumerating specifically benefits to the campaign in question given the hardships listed in the previous few paragraphs. The next paragraph appeals more directly to the reader if the previous incentives are in fact not sufficient cause to donate, revealing a prize that directly benefits the reader, pushing the donation as much as possible.

Then follows yet a single-line paragraph (“Will you make a donation of $25 now?”) followed by a link to donate, thus closing with a call to action and an easy way to do so. But if the addressee is still not convinced, the email continues! The remaining content is far more general, with the exception of a description of the prize to be had for donating, interleaved with several more instances of links to the donation page.

For the sake of brevity, this analysis ends here.