Jonathan,
I felt sorry last night after writing that argumentative thing about
what periods our catalogs are "optimized" for. I realized how silly it
was for me to say they're "optimized for this decade." I really think we
never believe our tools are perfect in the present: we're always trying
to improve them, and that's appropriate. We can always see better
possibilities on the horizon. It's only later, in retrospect, that we
can say they were "optimized" for a particular time period. I still
think I probably disagree on the mid-20th century idea, but I realize I
was out of line in saying they're optimized for now.
And this leads to a broader point about this list. It might seem at
times like I'm on some sort of "crusade" against change. I'm sorry if I
give this impression. I particularly worry that people might equate
Mann's ideas with mine--might use my posts as a reason to disregard new
things he publishes.
I think this list is good, and there are a lot of valuable things being
proposed here. I really only wanted to raise some cautions about the
dangers of giving up established principles. As I said last night, I
think it's best to do things incrementally, as Karen Coyle suggested is
likely. It would be a mistake to take Burke's advice and try to start
from scratch.
--Ted G.
Received on Thu May 31 2007 - 11:22:29 EDT