Into the Ether

Reading a deep book. "The Lightness of Being", by Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist, Frank Wilczek, is at once about the most minute and finite particles conceivable and the grandest possible scale of all known multi-verses. His assertion is simple, there must be energy and forces at work in every dark corner of real time and space--the "ether", he has decided is the source of answers to a unification theory. Under the heady influence of his far reaching ideas I have been introduced this past week to the Ietherpad. This interactive document sharing program has been dry run through the professional writing cohort to which I belong, and I for one am reeling. If, like the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics, this tool is beyond my initial comprehension, I reserve the right to retract the following criticism at a point of enlightenment in the future:

As the various users log in and view/edit the same document, they all must choose a color for their font. The palette it only pastel, and some colors simply should never be blended. The stark white space in conjunction with the soft pastel fonts use sends my eyes blurring. Also, aside from the colors and a key on the side bar, no identification of who is who can be found. So, document editors must nest their name into the lines they change. All this is manageable, until one returns later to find their color is no longer available and they must start dialogue in yet another hard to see hue. Chronology is not readily discernible, but can be shown in a real-time tool which plays the changes in the order they were made before your eyes. In all, the technology captures a powerful group-editing freedom, yet there are enough hitches to keep students hopping. Unlike the ether, which is purported to contain a grand unification, Ietherpad may have a long hold in a beta-state.

For solid analysis of writing, the SWOT protocols are offered as sieve of knowledge. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats loom as the spine of any successful endeavor. Intuitively speaking, any writer passes all four of these categories under their all-seeing eye (along with audience, tenor and a hosts of myriad details). Taking the time to brainstorm out this four part application is a guarantee to press a written piece into the next order of effectiveness.