There is so much debate going on about whether the guy who shot Rep. Giffords was influenced by communication such as Sarah Palin’s crosshairs, or was just a lone nut case.
Friends, IT DOESN’T MATTER!
Even a lone nut case is affected by environmental factors, and the communicational environment in the U.S.A. has been poisoned for a good 20 years now.
It’s in the air, and anyone can feel it.
When you live away and you come for a visit, you feel it so thick you can cut it with a dull plastic end of a lifelike plastic Kalatchnikoff barrel.
When it’s in the air, the nut cases will pick it up.
So will others.
Who cares if Loughner read Palin’s (or other extremists’) site or not? These sites didn’t cause the shooting, they created the atmosphere that helped someone decide that it was OK to shoot.
Content matters.
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Author: Ray
Ray Gallon is president and co-founder of The Transformation Society (www.transformationsociety.net), a research, training and consulting company focusing on building learning organisations that can manage complexity and the digital transformation. He has over 40 years as a communicator, first as an award-winning radio producer and journalist, then in the technical content industries. His management experience includes a stint as program manager of WNYC-FM, New York City’s public radio station.
Ray is a self-described "humanist nerd," and has always been interested in the meeting point between technology and culture, and has used his broad experience to advantage with companies such as IBM, General Electric Health Care, Alcatel, 3M, and the OECD, as well as in smaller companies and startup enterprises.
Ray recently helped co-found the Information 4.0 Consortium (www.information4zero.org) and serves as its current president.
Ray is a university lecturer and a keynote speaker at events throughout the world. He has contributed articles and chapters to many books and periodicals and is the editor of the recently published “Language of Technical Communication” (XML Press).
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Rant of a Humanist Nerd 