I would assume most avid readers among you would have seen this word appearing and know it’s meaning and how it’s used, but to me who’s still trying to grasp English as my third language, it’s an interesting new thing for me.

Anyway, it’s the use of the word/notation ‘[sic]‘, used beside a quotation to state that, the quote is deliberately shown with incorrect spelling or other mistakes, typically to retain the original form as was written by the original author (more details about it on Answers.com).

It reminded me of the conversation I had with Prof. Hiroshi Ishii when he was visiting HIT Lab NZ at a time I was doing my masters there. He is an amazing person, and I have to say just that single conversation with him that evening changed my ideas about technology greatly, and ultimately shaped my thinkings about how I would design future products, including ZenCub3d.

It is all about the people, I remember him telling me. Even if we all go back about our respected fields of research in our own ivory towers, technology’s ultimate goal will remain the same, that to which betters people’s lives. This especially holds true for us that does research in user interfaces, we often get stuck developing something that is technologically brilliant but forget about how it actually relates to the average human beings.

People are not purely logical beings, we are more emotions than anything (well, most of us). So it doesn’t matter what if you think about your research/product/design, whether it’s cool / complex / full of awesome features, if your mom can’t use it and instantly grasp the concept and find it meaningful, then, it is useless.

Btw, those are not his exact words, but that’s sort of the main idea.

What does this have to do with the new word that I learn?

Well, not directly, other than to remind me of a Japanese article (which I read using Google’s translations) about Prof. Ishii’s debate with another Japanese public figure, an education commentator of sorts. Sorry I don’t have a link to that article, it was such a long time ago (plus the translation was really bad, as automatic translations are). However, part of the debate was about historic text in textbooks, that it’s Prof. Ishii’s view that the actual original hand-written script should be preserved and shown in the textbook if possible, that we are loosing a huge amount of information by teaching students Shakespeare in modern standard fonts like Times New Roman or Lucida Grande. The ink usage, the speed, the pen pressure, the fluctuation of these, observed in people’s handwritings, add that extra dimension of insight to what the original author is feeling, thinking, living. Well ok, the example they were using were more Japanese history-oriented instead of Shakespeare, but you get the drift.

The more mature among you should totally understand what I’m saying, having read or made (or should I say experienced) hand-written love letters. They have special powers, those pieces of paper with manual ink marks. Even the simplest and shortest ones convey more emotions from the author than typed pages will ever do.

Seeing ‘[sic]‘ I now feel alot closer to the author than otherwise.

It is an interesting thing, that at this standardised digital day and age, the closest that we can come to preserving that extra dimension about the original author, is through their mistakes.

(If anyone quote any of my writings, I know I’ll get pages after pages of that word…)