Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [39]
Never e-mail angry. Abraham Lincoln had a wise policy about letters he wrote when he was angry: he would put them in his desk and never send them. That was during an era when it took more time to create and send a message; today it’s a lot easier to send an angry message before you can reconsider. It’s important to have a personal policy: if you feel angry when you write an e-mail, save it as an unsent draft and give yourself some time to “cool off” before deciding whether to send it.
E-mail is generally a poor medium for emotion or subtle cues. It’s no accident that many users still sprinkle their e-mails with emoticons, like :) and ;) , to help clarify that an otherwise risky statement is meant as “just kidding.” Almost any other medium is more precise at subtle cues: phone calls have tone of voice, video can show body language, handwritten notes are expressive in the strokes of the pen, and in-person, face-to-face communication is still—and always will be—best of all. E-mails are great at keeping up with details and increasing productivity, but they’re not as good at the “soft stuff.” It’s yet one more reason to let the bits go: finishing your bit-based work allows you to get to real life offline.
Chapter 9: File Formats
It’s easy to overlook the importance of file formats. Everything in the method described up to this point, in fact, can be accomplished without knowing much about them. For example, the chapter on organizing photos never mentions the most common digital photo format, JPG, or why it’s the most popular. People can organize their photos, after all, without knowing what format the pictures are in. Still, as this chapter will show, file formats are essential to bit literacy.
A file format is the particular arrangement of bits in a photo, song, document, or any other digital file. The format is usually denoted by a three-letter abbreviation, or “extension,” at the end of the file name. (For example, a photo named “picture1.jpg” has the extension “jpg”, which refers to the JPG file format.) Many users can recognize common extensions—.doc files are created by Microsoft Word, .ppt files by PowerPoint, and so on—but are otherwise unaware of file formats.
Bit-literate users must have this awareness. File formats aren’t arbitrary or random in their makeup; to the contrary, they are intentionally designed items, just like cars, chairs, and other consumer products. Every file format has certain assumptions and goals “baked” into its design, so it may or may not be helpful in a given circumstance. Some formats are built for easy shareability, others for professional-grade accuracy, and yet others are designed in part to advance the goals of the company that owns them.
It’s up to the user to choose the best format. The moment of choice usually comes when users create bits, either to share with others or to save for themselves. There’s an important distinction to make: the previous chapter covered how to create the content of a message, but here we discuss which format to put it in. Imagine a smitten poet who knows just the thoughts and feelings he wants to express in a love poem, but hasn’t yet chosen the language to write it in. Choosing a widely understood language like English could be a good choice, while writing it in Klingon would narrow the appeal considerably (unless his lover is a die-hard Trekkie). The choice of language is important, even though it doesn’t change the thoughts that the poet wants to express. Similarly, any file format could be a better or worse choice to contain a given message.
When creating bits, users must consider which file format will...
contain the message with an acceptable level of quality
allow recipients to download the file quickly and open it easily
be compatible with the most computers and devices, both today and in the future
Choosing the best format—and there often is a choice