OPINION BETWEEN THE LINES
New York Times Magazine and
Wired spoke on “homophily,”
the natural tendency for individuals to seek out others who
share their preferences. In other
words, birds of a feather flock
together. Thompson observes
that people online are flocking
to like-minded people—paying
allegiance to “editors” in Twitter
and Facebook who are similar
to them. But how diverse can
the content be? Are we missing
out on serendipity? How can we
design an experience so that we
can accidentally happen upon
information we might not otherwise encounter?
Of course, we’re already getting practice as editors: using
RSS readers to deliver content
from trusted sources; unsubscribing; creating coherence
with groups; and perhaps a
most interesting recent development, crafting language patterns to communicate. We’re
using links via people or groups
we follow on Twitter to filter
content that matters to us.
For seven centuries, editors
have used symbols to commu-
nicate with one another: proof-
readers’ marks. Proofreaders’
language comprises 42 symbols
that take the place of common
instructions such as “delete,”
“insert comma,” or “begin new
paragraph.” Editorial teams
have traditionally worked in
print manuscripts, passing lay-
ers of proofreaders’ marks back
and forth. The patterns of this
language have not changed
since it was introduced in the
early days of printing. Its effi-
ciency is unarguable—in a 600-
page manuscript, for example,
it allows a single symbol to rep-
resent “insert period” instead
of the inefficiency of writing
that out every time. But these
marks don’t translate well to
editing in digital formats; in
large publishing houses, edit-
ing still takes place in analog
format. Traditional editors
are running up against chal-
lenges as they question how to
translate proofreaders’ marks
into digital manuscripts for
formats like the Kindle. While
digital editing tools such as
Microsoft Word and Revizr help
mitigate some of the digital
issues, they’re far from perfect,
and many houses still rely on
the fusty print manuscript.
Twittergirl: This is a tweet!
Twitterguy: RT This is a tweet!
(via @Twittergirl)
In a recent draft of a paper
by danah boyd, Scott Golder,
and Gilad Lotan from Microsoft
Research, they explore the
syntax of retweeting and the
diverse conventions by which
it’s communicated within
Twitter. Another practice, the
#hashtags—the curious mashups of words and phrases preceded by the hash sign—is also
widely used. When it’s included
in a Twitter post, it indicates a
topic, location, or emotion the
user is believed to be addressing.
So from here, where? We’re
now simply making footprints
and leaving signs. While this is
a small step for us as burgeon-
ing editors, it’s a fascinating
departure as, traditionally, an
editor’s role has been an invis-
ible one—one to provide a sort
of statuesque transparency—to
give it form without knowing
he or she is there. The charac-
ter of the medium remained
unchanged, but the transfor-
mation was essential so that
consumers reveled in the media
rather than deliberated over it.
With this change, everything
has shifted downstream. The
footprints and signs of the edi-
tor’s role have moved from pre-
publishing to post-publishing.
Further Reading
“Brooke, Clive and
Ethan at Aspen.” On
the Media. September
4, 2009; http://www.
onthemedia.org/tran-
scripts/2009/09/04/06/
Gross, G. Editors on
Editing: What Writers
Need to Know about
What Editors Do. New
York: Grove Press,
1993.
Shirky, C. “It’s Not
Information Overload.
It’s Filter Failure.” Web
2.0 Expo, New York,
2008; http:// web2expo.
blip.tv/file/1277460/
boyd, d., Golder, S., and
Lotan, G. “Tweet, Tweet,
Retweet: Conversational
Aspects of Retweeting
on Twitter.” Microsoft
Research, January
2010.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Liz Danzico is
equal parts designer, educator, and editor.
She is chair and co-founder of the MFA in
Interaction Design Program at the School
of Visual Arts. She is an independent
consultant in New York, on the editorial
board for Rosenfeld Media, and on the
board of Design Ignites Change. In the
past, Danzico directed experience strategy
for AIGA, and the information architecture teams at Barnes & Noble.com and
Razorfish New York. and lectures widely.
She writes ongoing at Bobulate.com.
January + February 2010
DOI: 10.1145/1649475.1649479
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00