Untitled - witz cultural

86HYPERTEXT 3.0 ing from a system ofverbal language to one that centrally involves nonverbalinformation-visualinformation in the form of syrnbols and representationalelements as well as other forms of information, including sound-hasencountered stiffresistance, often from those from whom one is least likelyto expect it, namely, from those who already employ computers for writing'Even those who advocate a change frequently find the experience ofadvocacyand change so tiring that they resist the next stage, even if it appears implicitin changes they have themselves advocated.This resistance appears particularly clearly in the frequently encounteredremark that writers should not concern themselves with typesetting or desktoppublishing but ought to leave those activities to the printer. Academicsand other writers, we are told, do not design well; and even if they did, theargument continues, such activities are a waste of their time. Such advice,which has recently become an injunction, should make us ask why. Afterall, when told that one should not avail oneself of some aspect or form ofempowerment, particularly as awriter, one should askwhy. Whatif someonetold us: "Here is a pencil. Although it has a rubber apparatus at the oppositeend from that with which you write, you should not use it. Real writers don'tuse it"l At the very least we should wonder why anyone had included suchcapacities to do something; experimenting with it would show that it erases;and very likely, given human curiosity and perversity, which may be the samething in certain circumstances, we would be tempted to try it out. Thus acapacity would evolve into a guilty pleasure!Anyone with the slightest interest in design who has even casually surveyedthe output of commercial and university presses has noticed a highpercentage ofappallingly designed or obviously undesigned books. Despitethe exemplary work of designers like P. f . Conkwright, Richard Eckersley,and Glen Burris, many presses continue to produce nasty-looking books withnarrow margins and gutters, tl?e too small or too coarse for a particular layout,and little sense ofpage design. Financial constraints are usually offeredas the sole determinant of the situation, though good design does not have toproduce a more costly final product, parricularly in an age of computer typesetting.In several cases I am aware of,, publishers have assigned book designto beginning manuscript editors who have had no training or experience ingraphic design. As one who has been forflrnate enough to have benefitedfrom the efforts of first-rate, talented designers far more than I have sufferedfrom those of poor ones, I make these observations not as a complaint butas a preparation for inquiring why authors are told they should not concern