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DOOMIFICATION

                                    
An approach for converting text to  
doomfile format:                    
                                    
  Reformat with tight right margin. 
                                    
  Split paragraphs into smaller units
  (one rectpara per sentence, i.e. idea?)
                                    
  Chop unnecesary words.                      It's amazing how hard
                                              it can be to read text
  Turn parenthetic comments into              stripped of the apparently
  side bars.                                  "unnecesary" words.
                                    
  Reorganize "train" of thought into                The doomification
  "tree" of thought.                                process has interesting
                                                    biases: short Hemingway
                                                    style sentences are
Plan on obsolescence:                               favored.  Fewer words
try not to work on things                           are usually best, but
that can't be finished                              large words are awkward:
before they're irrelevant.                          they make it harder to
                                                    format into rectangles.
For example, worrying about                         E.g.: above, "Hemingway
the human gene pool being                           style" was originally
contaminated by poor traits                         "hemingwayesque".
(like bad eye sight) that           
civilization protects.  Dumb,                           Even better though,
because in a few decades the                            would be to drop
genes of the children will be                           the Hemingway ref.
under direct control of the                             It's not even
parents... and *that* may                               obscure enough to     
cause some problems worth                               be pretentious. 
worrying about.                     
                                                Speaking of pretentiousness, 
If you buy into Drexler's      NANOTECH         this is another 
ideas completely this                           problem with 
principle knocks down                           doomification: 
a lot of concerns:                              "excess" words 
from Drexler's point of                         are often there 
view, why worry about                           to soften statements, 
rapid space industrialization                   to provide a sense of 
if nanotech will make it                        modesty.  "In my opinion"; 
all easy long before it                         "I think that"; "But then 
happens otherwise?                              I could be wrong"...      
                                                many phrases can be choped 
Which is better: write about                    without changing the idea 
the entirety of an author's                     being stated, and yet this can 
work under one subject heading                  make the statement sound  
(e.g. the author's name), or                    much more egocentric.     
split up the writing, filing                                              
each piece under some more specific 
subject?  Answer: The Latter.

((Example: Maybe the stuff under the
Delany heading would work better split up
according to subject, with subheadings about
different works by Delany, like Babel-17, say.))



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