In the same way science and technology have pros and cons, writing about them have pros and cons as well. Researchers may find text to not be comprehensive enough while the average Joe might find it to be mind-boggling and overwhelming to understand more than a few lines. In some ways, this range acts as a filter to disregard baseless discoveries and promote rigorous analyze of discovery if they occur. If writing is geared more towards the average Joe, writing science and technology would be more focused on appealing to readers than to comprehensively report a discovery. If science and technology are to advance, the goal should be to make new advances rather than informing people of all walks of life so they have the same knowledge as you to the extent that they should be capable to contribute new ideas from their background. If the writing assumes knowledge of the topics addressed, the average Joe would be faced with a monolithic tree of prerequisites. Some might be irrelevant. Since science and technology are funded by others, making writing to difficult to read would not benefit anyone.
The above just mentions a few issues of writings about science and technology. One idea to fix this could be to catogorize writings into a system of levels. First, only reputable sources would have a level on them. This would prevent anyone writing an article on the internet from self-publishing and categorizing their work without scientific merit. Having a levels system would not create a huge bureaucracy. Writings can be categorized fairly quickly. With several levels, everyone has the chance to know what level writing they could understand for a specific topic and can move up to a higher level once they studied enough. This model seems to already exist in modern day except the number of researches in the highest level drastically decreases. In conclusion, writing in science and technology should be clear, concise, and well documented with references. The rest is up to the effort readers put in to understand, think critically, and perhaps contribute something new.
Sorry; I'm still trying to get access to post, so for the time being, here's my blogpost:
ReplyDeleteWho’s the Right Audience?
People always read—novels, newspapers, magazines, etc. However, regular people usually don’t go out and pick up the latest science journals and read them cover to cover, eagerly wanting more. Likewise, regular people usually don’t go out and pick up the latest history book and read them cover to cover. But why? Is there simply no more interest in the arts and sciences, or has the general population simply become so stupid to not be able to understand these subjects? The answer does not have anything to do with the reader, but rather, the author’s audience.
A good author will always keep a certain audience in mind. For example, the miserably-hard-to-read science articles are written with other scientists in mind. But this begs another question: why can’t they all just be written for everyone to read; surely, if a common person were able to understand exactly what was going on in the experiment, he or she could potentially spark a serendipitous discovery, and move the study further. But therein lies the issue—it is impossible. By pinpointing a certain audience, the author is making certain assumptions about his audience, and this is influencing the author’s writing. For example, let’s continue with the science journal example. The author is writing the journal to share his research with the scientific world, and he or she is thus assuming that they have a general understanding of the basic biology, chemistry, or physics content used in the article. If a normal person were to pick up this science journal and read even a single page, he or she would likely not be able to interpret much of the content because the author has not taken the extra time to explain certain concepts because the author assumed that his audience—scientists—would have a certain level of understanding about the subject.
-David Cheng