[idn] linguistic propriety

[Dave Crocker <dhc@dcrocker.net>]

At 12:57 PM 3/22/2001, A. Vine wrote:
>Thank you for remembering that non-technical people are not necessarily
>women with children, particularly older ones.

"Politically correct" has become a slur.  As it should be.

It began with a serious and valid concern about public expression of biases 
and slurs.  Then it became its own tyranny.

If we are all required to author text that is only so sanitized that it 
cannot possibly cross the path of anyone's sensitivities, then we are 
required to author text that has no soul and will usually fail to call up 
adequate descriptive and referential force.  However readers have some 
responsibility, too.  They are are required to take comments in context.

Please note that the core of John's comment was about his own mother.  As 
was mine, albeit in a followup note.

Are we prohibited from citing people within our direct experience, 
including family members?

Are we prohibited from citing the population sample that they might 
represent, in order to give personality to an issue?

The purpose of the reference was to give flexh to a generalization about 
the population of non-technical users.  Within technical discussions, it is 
easy to lose track of the nature and texture of the non-technical user 
population.  The term "non-technical user" is not sufficient.

Let's try to cut each other a bit of slack.

The point of my original comment was, I think, pretty clear.  The nature of 
the burden placed on users is an extremely important issue.  We most 
certainly must distinguish between those of us qualifying as geeks, with 
all of the attendant willingness to make infinite adjustments to 
technology, versus those of us who are non-technical, who are "other", who 
are everyday real people.  Like kindly and unkindly, intelligent and 
average, knitting and non-knitting grandmothers.

The burden of change that may reasonably be placed on this latter group, 
for using technology, is not the same as for geeks.  But -- and this was my 
primary point -- the burden is not zero, either.

It's ok to require SOME change, and we have plenty of evidence that the 
current domain name semantic model is entirely within the grasp of the vast 
majority of the world's literate population.  We need to expand the 
character set.  We do not need to change the semantic.

d/

----------
Dave Crocker   <mailto:dcrocker@brandenburg.com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking   <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel: +1.408.246.8253;   fax: +1.408.273.6464