I recently wrote a few manuals to help document methods for an organization.\u00a0 In essence, I wrote them describing what I do so that should I become incapacitated, there is instruction on what I did to help\u00a0a\u00a0successor\u00a0along.<\/p>\n
In describing these manuals, I described them as “time-binding manuals.”\u00a0 While I was definitely referring to general semantics with the reference, the reference was a surprisingly natural thing to say when it came to describing these manuals.\u00a0 In writing these manuals, I was helping bind the future who might inherit my work with the past–that is, me, now–who is doing the work.\u00a0 The manuals were like glue–they did the binding of the two different generations.<\/p>\n
Things like manuals and a number of different kinds of written works are time-binding tools<\/em>.\u00a0 They exist by design to help the future understand the past.\u00a0 Alfred Korzybski coined the term “time-binding,” and expounded upon it in his 1921 book Manhood of Humanity<\/em>.\u00a0 He described time-binding as the characteristic that distinguishes man from animal.\u00a0 According to Korzybski, animals don’t time-bind.\u00a0 Have you ever seen a monkey’s manual or a cow’s guidebook?<\/p>\n But maybe we didn’t need Korzybski to coin the term.\u00a0 Maybe it would eventually have been used by the manual-writer who needed to underline the purpose of writing the manual.\u00a0 “The manual is a time-binding tool to help preserve organizational procedure.”\u00a0 In such a sentence, the term “time-binding” doesn’t have a technical meaning–just an everday one.\u00a0 Remarkable, huh?<\/p>\n But it took Korzybski to underline the importance<\/em> of this characteristic to humanity.\u00a0 Animals and plants just don’t seem to do this.\u00a0 Because of time-binding, humans can pick up where others left off in their work.\u00a0 Because of time-binding, we don’t have to relearn things after our predecessors’ deaths; we can read a little bit then skip much of the frustrations they encountered and jump to the successes.\u00a0 Of course I’m talking in general, and there’s something to be said about the value of making mistakes.\u00a0 But it is because of things like manuals, we don’t need to make wrong steps in order to\u00a0find right steps.\u00a0 We can jump right to right steps.<\/p>\n And animals don’t seem to have this kind of benefit.\u00a0 Surely, there is some evolutionarily programmed behavior animals exhibit.\u00a0 But animals don’t typically progress from generation to generation.\u00a0 If they build a wasp’s nest, it doesn’t end up with a porch or garage complete with garage door opener.\u00a0It stays a wasp’s nest and becomes a wasp’s nest every time.\u00a0 \u00a0The human builds huts, then houses, then houses with garages with garage door openers, then whatever is to come.\u00a0 The hut becomes something next<\/em>.<\/p>\n What is\u00a0fundamental to\u00a0a manual?\u00a0 Instruction.\u00a0 How is instruction conveyed?\u00a0 By words.\u00a0 Give a future reader a set of words, and you yield particular results in the future.\u00a0 So, your choice of words in your instructions\u00a0now can have cultural impacts later.\u00a0 Choose your words wisely as you offer instruction in your manuals because you might inadvertently wire the future for failure over success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently wrote a few manuals to help document methods for an organization.\u00a0 In essence, I wrote them describing what I do so that should I become incapacitated, there is instruction on what I did to help\u00a0a\u00a0successor\u00a0along. In describing these manuals, I described them as “time-binding manuals.”\u00a0 While I was definitely referring to general semantics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[94,321,239,215,322,319,38,317,31,318,320],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-semantics","tag-alfred-korzybski","tag-animals","tag-characteristics","tag-humanity","tag-humans","tag-instruction","tag-manhood-of-humanity","tag-manuals","tag-time-binding","tag-time-binding-tools","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benhauck.com\/offthemap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}