The Digital Document Quarterly (DDQ) will treat quality for digital documents—books, newspapers, scholarly papers, scientific tables, legal briefs, medical charts, engineering designs, and government and business records—the carriers for many kinds of information. Our topic touches the welfare of every citizen.
DDQ will focus, at least during 2002, on the problems that “trust”, “trustworthy”, and “trusted” imply and on trustworthy digital mechanisms—and their limitations. Can you trust e-mail or what you read on the World Wide Web? How can you persuade people to trust what you send?
For what kind of reader is this newsletter intended? How will it be different?
Our target reader is the university graduate who reads and writes extensively, and who wants to understand and perhaps influence the “digital revolution”. Hopefully, DDQ will appeal to liberal arts and social science graduates—people who are not engineers and scientists—who want to understand policies that affect their professional and personal lives, but do not want to study the technological intricacies and jargon.
Not everyone will find DDQ easy. This should be no surprise, because the issues are profound. If they were easy, it would not be taking years for many brilliant people to agree on the best methods.
“Getting it right” necessarily involves precision in language and in action. Whenever it is difficult to express an idea both simply and correctly, DDQ will favor precision over simplicity, taking the view that simple does not justify simplistic. DDQ is for intelligent readers who can think about technical policy, but who have neither time nor inclination to study digital engineering.
DDQ will focus, at least during 2002, on the problems that “trust”, “trustworthy”, and “trusted” imply and on trustworthy digital mechanisms—and their limitations. Can you trust e-mail or what you read on the World Wide Web? How can you persuade people to trust what you send?
For what kind of reader is this newsletter intended? How will it be different?
Our target reader is the university graduate who reads and writes extensively, and who wants to understand and perhaps influence the “digital revolution”. Hopefully, DDQ will appeal to liberal arts and social science graduates—people who are not engineers and scientists—who want to understand policies that affect their professional and personal lives, but do not want to study the technological intricacies and jargon.
Not everyone will find DDQ easy. This should be no surprise, because the issues are profound. If they were easy, it would not be taking years for many brilliant people to agree on the best methods.
“Getting it right” necessarily involves precision in language and in action. Whenever it is difficult to express an idea both simply and correctly, DDQ will favor precision over simplicity, taking the view that simple does not justify simplistic. DDQ is for intelligent readers who can think about technical policy, but who have neither time nor inclination to study digital engineering.
Please have a look at the past issues of DDQ at
