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Accidental Magic

By Jay Speyerer

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Published: 01May2009
Word count: 565
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Rob Legato was visual effects coordinator for the seasons 1987-92 of Star trek: The Next Generation. In an interview, he said that he much preferred using miniatures for shots of the Starship Enterprise and other outer space special effects as opposed to computer generated imagery.

This is because the models already exist, whereas all of the computer effects have to be thought up. That means when using physical models, the chance exists for an accidentally cool lighting effect, one which was totally unforeseen and unplanned. There's no chance for that magical accident of light with CGI because all that imagery has to be created and designed from scratch. You know ... foreseen and planned.

The same can be said for offline research vs. online research.

When I was teaching, most of my students did all their research online. That's probably one reason why Google is not only a multi-billion dollar company, but is also a verb. Research is mundane and boring to a lot of people, whether it's for school essays, genealogy, business presentations, or writing in general, so they just want to get it over with. But in doing that, they don't open themselves up to serendipity.

I have no quarrel with Google; I use it often myself. Using necessarily specific search terms will get you accurate results, but these results will probably be narrowly focused. And this narrow focus serves to fit you with virtual blinders to other possibilities. There is no adjacency effect with Google or any other search engine. No happy accidents.

The term "adjacency effect" is used for other disciplines, but let's think of it as a side effect -- no, a benefit -- of offline physical research. There are always other articles before and after the one you're reading in the encyclopedia (you remember ... those multi-volume books with either Britannica or World Book embossed on the cover). There are always other article titles and references near the one you find in the periodical index (the series of green-bound books that list newspaper and magazine articles by subject, title, publication, and year).

It happens even when you use the card catalogue to find a particular book. If you go to the stacks and get it yourself, you'll see many other books on the same subject nearby. You'll find an embarrassment of riches and will be drawn to look into those, too.

It happened to me once when I was looking at old newspapers on microfilm. I was researching a fiction story set in the 1920s, and I was checking period newspapers for society announcements to see what they talked about and how they were written. But I happened to pass by the classified ads and found some fascinating nuggets that ended up in the story.

For instance, there were no ads for used cars, but you could find as many second-hand horses as you wanted. Don't try to rent an apartment if you were Irish, but you could find plenty of work if you were a "colored maid." It was a crystal clear snapshot of another aspect of American society. And I wasn't even looking for it.

C.G.I (computer generated imagery) can be beautiful, artistic, creative and many other positive adjectives. C.G.R. (computer generated research) can be informative, accurate, useful, and many other positive adjectives. What neither will be is accidental. And that goes for Google, too.

Jay Speyerer has been a writer, a speaker, and an educator for more than 30 years, successfully helping people achieve their communication goals in memoir writing, e-mail, cross-cultural communication, and presentation skills. Want to communicate better with co-workers and clients? Find out how at his web site: => http://www.jayspeyerer.com

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