The Social Research Foundation Documentary Print

Documentary Print includes THE SOCIAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION INTERIM REPORT DOCUMENT ON LIVING IN THE FUTURE and THE HILL TRIBE REPORT "I was writing this at a cusp of societal change, when the introduction of the computer society was about to enter the personal realm, radically reorganizing everyone's way of life. I see it as a cry of the heart as it is being submerged by the analytical and ultimately bureaucratic forces of that coming new era." - Carol Sill HIGH GRADE INFORMATION Those who read Social Research report documents such as this tend to search for high-grade unused information which has not yet been attractively packaged. Nevertheless, this particular document is, in fact, ushering in a new era of report documentation, particularly as it applies to the Social Research field. No longer will the social researcher be taxed with pages of undigested data. By taking a comprehensive subjective view, the SRF has leapt into the wide new field of Personalization. This affords vast resources of data, already attractively packaged in a personalized form. Thus, subjectivity creates high-grade information. Even when the original data sources are "common knowledge" personal filtration of Social Research data transforms low-grade multi-use information into high-grade "special interest" information with the bonus of attractive packaging. Recycled informational components can reappear again and again without causing Fresh Mind Exhaustion thanks to the personalization of the subjective view. - from The Social Research Foundation Interim Report Carol Sill wrote this book episodically and by hand in the early 1980's, before the personal computer, well before the internet's world wide web, and long before blogs and the rise of social media. It was intended to be a real-time document of interior processes, with a few excursions into description of exterior events. It is published here as it was originally written. Over the years this odd document has proven to be somewhat prophetic, predicting, the rise of individual and public reporting on an unimagined scale via social media. Maybe researchers did enter the future! It was those resonances, combined with a desire to share this writing, that encouraged this edition. In 1985 Sill self-published a photocopied version with hand-stitched binding, but, like the SRF documents described in the book, the few that remained were stored for years in containers, unseen.