But, fittingly, it's the documents that steal the show. Time after time, McNamara describes the data that led him to make his decisions. And over and over, Morris fills the screen with words, diagrams and—especially—numbers. Not since Reid Miles designed for Blue Note has so much Courier been blown up to such seductive effect. Newpapers, magazines, textbooks. military reports, maps, every kind of information is enlarged to the point of abstraction—which to McNamara it all seems to be.Technical communication historically valued itself for its ability to be completely transparent and neutral. But, we now know, that transparency is itself an ethical stance, one often used to hide real human effects.
(Bierut's title is also great--"Errol Morris Blows Up Spreadsheet, Thousands Killed.")
Shameless plug: Stuart Selber and I have an edited collection on technical communication called Central Works coming out from Oxford University Press in February 2004 that includes excellent pieces on this topic, including work by Steven Katz (on the rhetoric of Nazi memos) and Ben and Marthlee Barton (on the ideology of maps).
[via Design Observer: writings about design & culture]
Posted by johndan at December 22, 2003 09:54 PM
| TrackBack