Notes on Further Research into Aesthetics and Usability (and What It Means for Technical Writers)

~ Richard Rabil, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Lately I've been studying the role of aesthetics in documentation. My research led me to an article titled "Is beautiful really usable? Toward understanding the relation between usability, aesthetics, and affect in HCI" by Alexandre N. Tuch, Sandra P. Roth, and others (2012, Computers in Human Behavior). You can download a copy of the manuscript … Continue reading Notes on Further Research into Aesthetics and Usability (and What It Means for Technical Writers)

TikTok Versus Long, Hard, Boring Books

~ Richard Rabil, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

From Matthew Lee Anderson: "[...] the attempt to ‘accommodate’ the Tiktok-ification of our college intellectual culture does young people a grave disservice. Young people desperately need the difficulty of long, hard, boring books. They need large tomes, much more than they need efforts to capture their attention that try to outdo the TikTok videos they … Continue reading TikTok Versus Long, Hard, Boring Books

Ideological Science and the New American Dream

~ Richard Rabil, Jr. ~ Leave a comment

Greetings! Check out the opening of this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education about ideological biases in social science:   "Last summer in these pages, Mordechai Levy-Eichel and Daniel Scheinerman uncovered a major flaw in Richard Jean So’s Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction, one that rendered the book’s … Continue reading Ideological Science and the New American Dream

On Dante’s ‘Paradiso’ and How Tolkien Improved His Story

~ Richard Rabil, Jr.

Another week, another dollar. What I'm reading: I finished Dante's Paradiso---at last. The poet ascends the spheres of heaven with his guide Beatrice, meeting figures such as Adam, Thomas Aquinas, St. Peter, Mary, and St. John along the way. I have many thoughts and feelings about it, but one surprising moment was in canto 27, … Continue reading On Dante’s ‘Paradiso’ and How Tolkien Improved His Story

On Writing, ChatGPT, Harry Potter, and Evil Equity Language

~ Richard Rabil, Jr.

What a week. One of the low points was the discovery that Clarkesworld magazine has temporarily halted short story submissions due to an overwhelming influx of fake content generated by AI tools. Clarkesworld is one of the venues where I was planning to submit a work of mine, so needless to say, I'm ticked at … Continue reading On Writing, ChatGPT, Harry Potter, and Evil Equity Language

The Impact of ChatGPT on Technical Writing

~ Richard Rabil, Jr. ~ 1 Comment

Update 03/31/2023: On his popular tech writing blog I'd Rather Be Writing, Tom Johnson has a more thorough treatment of this subject than my short comments below. I remain less optimistic than he does about AI language generators, but his concrete examples of how writers could work with ChatGPT rather than eschew it are helpful. … Continue reading The Impact of ChatGPT on Technical Writing

Writing Inspiration: Ancient Bath Ruins and Why Roman Baths Disappeared

~ Richard Rabil, Jr.

The other day I saw some paintings of ancient baths which got my imagination going. The scale of the architecture has almost a mythical quality. There are traces here of the capricci style, which has a special place in my heart. Hubert Robert, “Ruins of a Roman Bath with Washerwomen”. Source: Hyperallergic.com. Hubert Robert, "Ancient … Continue reading Writing Inspiration: Ancient Bath Ruins and Why Roman Baths Disappeared