Light On and Light Through

With client books in various stages of evolution, plus the new blog part of this business, I’ve been quite busy for the past month. There is a renewed interest in blogging of course, which is growing exponentially, but this doesn’t eliminate the book as a method of keeping, transmitting and retaining information, thought, and meta-concepts.

When a person learns to speak another language in a rudimentary way, she may be able to communicate the basics, but the subtleties and metaphysics in the language can take a very long time to evolve.

I feel new media still has a long way to go in this regard, before it can embody the rich and deep interior landscape that has been the realm of literature for the past many-hundreds of years. The place of the book is still ensured, even if the book is in an electronic version. What comes to mind here is McLuhan’s studies in the effects of light “on” a screen as in movies, and light “through” a screen as in television.

We have all felt the fascination and seduction of a strong jewel-like visual image on the computer screen, followed by a let-down when that image is printed and looks flat, and rather emptied of the illumination. “Light through” brings it to life, “light on” – not so much. With text it is a different story. The “light through” makes us feel as if we were viewing, rather than reading, and other aspects of the brain and our sensorium are activated. The process is more rapid, scanning and viewing. “Light on” – the printed word – we are back in the realm of reading. Both methods are complementary, and we prepare differently for each.

Although the books we prepare are put together on the screen, written in Word, or some such program, then laid out in InDesign, their destination is not the screen, but the page. They are created as books, not as screen-experiences, not even as documents of screen-experiences. The process is one of projecting the mind to imagine the words on the page and to imagine the page in print, working from that point of view.

alphablogs

Focusing on the needs of small business and independent entrepreneurs, we have been working to create alphablogs, as a division of Alpha Glyph Publications Ltd.

We know blogging and we can help you get started and keep your blog going. We also help your blog find its audience, ultimately reaching many more clients and contacts through application of the latest web technology.

When you wish to reach an audience with your message, the blog is the ideal way to contact your clients, both current clients and clients-to-be. With the capability of indepth info (as much as you wish to generate) and the potential for many-to-many contacts that web 2.0 offers you will find yourself in the new universe of 21st century communications. Your blog posting can also be converted to a newsletter which your clients may subscribe to for up to the minute info.

Enter the realm of transparent communications, which the new web offers. It’s much more than just a blog, but can truly replace the old idea of the website completely. You will find that there can be continual updates on your info, and you can make those updates yourself. No need for high setup fees: for under $500 you will have a website ready to go with all the high functionality you will need to be confident in the 21st century marketplace.

We will patiently guide you into the workings of this new communications environment and will give you the tools to do as much of it yourself as you want to handle. Or we can set it all up and run it for you. Get yourself an alphablog, and find out what we are talking about.

Add video or audio to your site easily and inexpensively. Prepare your own information or we can put it together for you. And we help you get hits for your postings. Each blog posting is like a tiny website in itself, and is viewed independently by search engines like google. What this means to you is that you have the potential to reach many more clients through micro-targeted content. It also means that you don’t have to be one-track-minded in your messaging, but can branch out to the subtleties and overtones that are the intangibles that make your business tick, and that make your approach to your business unique.

Ultimately it is up to you. Your vision of your work and field of endeavour can be personally and professionally reflected through an alphablog site. Need a website? We can set that up for you. Need a blog? Naturally – it is our first love! Need a video blog or audio podcast? We can get that started for you and keep it going. Comprehensive sites use many capabilities which we also provide, including writing, editing, research, SEO for blogs, photos and images, links, comments, and community development (if needed).

We are really excited by the potential and possibility of this new aspect of publishing, and will be officially launching alphablogs soon. Meanwhile, for more information, you can reach us through the Alpha Glyph contact info.

Check the blogs page of this site for some examples of work to date.

Resonant Meaning vs Searchable Content

What is literacy? A deep and amazing process which enables a reader or writer to create, perceive and participate in worlds of thought across time and place. Here minds have participated and evolved since pre-history. Listings just don’t do it.

Now that the contents of publications can be searched by word or work groupings on a massive scale, we feel we have knowledge nailed – computers win as the texts of the world become an Alexandria of wisdom.
These word fragments mean as much to us as the letter “a” or “t” would. The process can be seen as a kind of alphabetization of words. There is no context or meaning to this kind of information. Instead, we have more fragmentation.  We think that by listing and accessing all documents which include the word “Alexandria” we can have an accumulation that will yield the knowledge of Alexandria’s burned libraries. But if we look at the process used for this, we could just as easily be listing all words that begin with the letter “w” – an interesting exercise, for those who enjoy reading the dictionary.

Of course it’s great to be able to have info at your fingertips, to catalyze more cross-references, more awareness of similarities and differences. But will this process contribute to the continued development of thought-worlds for generations to come?

In a way, these listings could be killing off the fairies. They could be the death of the rich inner thought world that literacy creates. They are replacing resonant meaning with searchable content.
How do we develop and enable literacy in such an environment?

Tina McInerney’s Book on The Truth About Reading

I’ve been working on this very interesting project with Tina McInerney, and it’s been quite a journey. You can see more on Tina and her work in her blog. We’ve just listed the book project (and accompanying presentations) with Give Meaning, which is a great innovative fundraising site for individual and independent worthwhile projects. If you wish to support the idea of the project, we first need 100 votes to make the project active. Just log in to Give Meaning and vote to add your name to the list of supporters.

Here it is: The Truth About Reading.

When I first met with Tina and we discussed reading and the whole process, I immediately connected to all my McLuhan study, and his anaysis of the effects of the alphabet on culture, civilization and the mind. Here was Tina telling me the same thing, from her own personal standpoint. In a flash, I “got it” and was very keen to partner with her and her organization, the Society for the Immediate Awareness of Alternative Learning.

This project is a fantastically meaningful and complex process. To help produce a book written by someone who couldn’t read, and whose experience in the regular school system was so very destructive of self-esteem is a poetic process, engaging my full being – more than simple book coaching and editorial. It is important that Tina express this for herself, and not that I “package” her expression based on my preconceived notions. It is a welcome challenge to the grip of the alphabetic mind, yet requires me to use that very mind to express experience that occurs beyond its limitations. So that’s fun! And the project is so very worthwhile, aiming to help kids and adults who have gone through what Tina’s been through. We have some dynamite sample pages that Tina has put together, with words and images from her school days.

And my McLuhan media study mind is reeling with how powerful the hegemony of the written word is: people who know Tina very well were very moved by what she had expressed. They actually said that they hadn’t really understood what she felt, until they read it! This applies to all writers and individuals who need to express themselves, the written word still communicates deeply aspects of inner life and interior experience that may never be known by others any other way.