The beauty of Plain English

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This morning’s Observer column…

‘Political language’, observed George Orwell in his great essay on ‘Politics and the English Language’, ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’ Much the same applies to the output of the public relations industry. One of the most important public services that mainstream journalism can provide, therefore, consists of decoding PR-speak: translating its half-truths, unsupported assertions and evasions into plain English…

This column is really a celebration of John Gruber’s lovely translation of Macrovision CEO Fred Amoroso’s Response to Steve Jobs’s ‘Thoughts on Music’.

Orwell would have loved it.

Sun rises again

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From today’s New York Times…

Sun Microsystems solidly beat Wall Street’s estimates yesterday when it reported a profit for the fourth quarter, providing evidence that the company’s turnaround plan was working.

The report sent shares of Sun up nearly 10 percent in after-hours trading, after they declined 3 cents to close at $4.89 earlier in the day.

Profit at Sun, which makes computer servers, was $329 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier net loss of $301 million, or a loss of 9 cents a share. Revenue rose to $3.84 billion from $3.83 billion. Analysts had expected, on average, earnings of 5 cents a share on $3.84 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Financial.

It was the third consecutive quarter of profit for the company, which had endured a lengthy downturn and five consecutive quarters of losses….

Time to eat my hat, then. Two years ago, I thought the company was doomed.

Real life intrudes into Second Life

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From GMSV:

The more the Real World pushes in, the more Second Life starts looking like First Life.

On Wednesday, with the FBI looking over its shoulder, proprietor Linden Lab shut down Second Life’s casinos and declared there shall be no wagering on games of chance throughout the land.

Then yesterday came word that IBM — once famous for its unspoken but rigid white-shirt-and-wingtips workforce dress code — would be spelling out guidelines for the appearance and behavior of employee avatars in virtual worlds. There’s no mention of navy blue suits, but workers are advised to be “especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.” In other words, it would be best not to come to meetings as a badger in a ball gown. Employees are also urged not to be two-or-three-faced. “Building a reputation of trust within a virtual world represents a commitment to be truthful and accountable with fellow digital citizens,” IBM states. “Dramatically altering, splitting or abandoning your digital persona may be a violation of that trust. … In the case of a digital persona used for IBM business purposes, it may violate your obligations to IBM.”

I find this deeply reassuring, somehow. It fits neatly with the discovery that the social stratification that characterises the real world also applies to social networking sites — with MySpace down the socio-economic (as well as the age) scale, and Facebook up the scale in Preppyland. Stand by for the first New Yorker cartoon showing two Baby Boomer parents confronting Preppy teenage daughter with trailer-trash troglodyte in tow. “Don’t you think he’s a bit MySpacey for you, honey?”