[FRIAM] sometimes an onion is just an onion...

[glen ☣]

On 06/15/2017 10:19 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> Tech companies usually distinguish between marketing and R&D.   Marketing is about connecting with the customer.  R&D is about creating the magical device that doesn't even need to be explained at a technical level.  So what if it apparently breaks the laws of physics or reads your mind..  

I don't know if I agree with you about the purpose of R&D.  Yes, it's about creating the magic device.  But I think one of the key insights to all the yaddayadda around innovation and disruption is not that it doesn't need to be explained (in words).  It's about the "phase" change the market goes through as they grok it (fully digest it in behavior as well as thought).  Some weirdly configured people speak/listen and become convinced that a (hypothetical or prototypical) device will cause such a phase change.  And in that sub-population, language matters, both listening and speaking.

But the important point is that I agree that this is a counter-argument to Nick's.  Nick's impetus to write to the specifications of the reader imply the analogous engineering to optimally fit the user/usage.  But engineering the device to optimally fit the user/usage isn't what tech companies want.  What they want is to create the device and have the percolation of it out into the world, change the world.  I.e. the creation isn't constricted to fit the audience.  The creation is intended to _change_ the audience.

Mikhail Epstein makes exactly this point in "Transformative Humanities": http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14619587-the-transformative-humanities, a book I'm being forced to read by one of my friends.  It is as vitriolic about postmodernism as some on this mailing list.  So, I recommend it to anyone who cares about the uncertain state of the humanities.

-- 
☣ glen