Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
worthwhile, and that the new idea is more important than is in fact the case. Contrasts
should be between the new and the current, not the new and the fictitious.
Query languages have changed over the years. For the first database systems
there were no query languages and records were retrieved with programs.
Before then data was kept in filing cabinets and indexes were printed on paper.
Records were retrieved by getting them from the cabinets and queries were
verbal, which led to many mistakes being made. Such mistakes are impossible
with new query languages like QIL.
A more subtle form of straw man is comparison between the new and the ancient.
For example, criticisms based on results in old papers are sometimes unreasonable,
because many of the factors that affected the results (architecture, scale, kinds of data,
beliefs about algorithms, and so on) have changed dramatically in the meanwhile.
Likewise, decisions that look poor in retrospect may have been perfectly rational at
the time.
Historical fallacies are another form of the same issue.
Since the invention of the internet, researchers have been using the Web to
publish data.
The Web was invented in 1989 and became generally available within academia in
1993 or so; the internet as we now know it began to develop in the 1970s and was
in wide use long before 1990. And the two are not equivalent—one is infrastructure,
the other is traffic.
Researchers working on computer image generation initially failed to consider
the benefits of parallel processing.
Considering that those researchers were working in the 1970s, they were unlikely to
have had access to more than a single, sequential computer.
A strawman is an example of rhetoric—of attempting to win an argument through
presentation rather than reasoning. Other forms of rhetoric are appeal to authority,
appeal to intuitively obvious truth, and presentation of received wisdom as fact.
We did not investigate partial interpretation because it is known to be
ineffective.
If there is evidence—a study or proof, not someone else's opinion—then cite it.
Unsubstantiated claims should be clearly noted as such, not dressed up as accepted
knowledge.
Most users prefer the graphical style of interface.
We believe that most users prefer the graphical style of interface.
Another possibility would be a disk-based method, but this approach is
unlikely to be successful.
Another possibilitywould be a disk-basedmethod, but our experience suggests
that this approach is unlikely to be successful.
