Re: [projectvrm] [ PFIR ] Proposed California law requires site privacy polices not to exceed 8th grade language and 100 words

["Phil Wolff, PDEC" < >]

On the readability front, 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/feb/12/state-of-the-union-reading-level 

It looks to me like: 

- SOTU Flesch-Kincaid readability (grade levels needed to read) fell as media distribution grew and the authors weren't just reporting to educated elites. 

- Formal communication styles, the language of authority, became more colloquial over time. 

- The US developed a shorthand for policy topics, as a country, making pith pothible. 

Kaliya and I have been writing and rewriting blurbs for her seminars on the Personal Data Economy; boiling down why this topic is worth a deep-dive is tough. I'm short on prior art for explaining why this is useful, important and urgent to newbies. Heck, we can't even assume awareness of user centricity, design thinking, or the existence of CRM. And in today's medium of email subject lines and tweets and bumper stickers, we are still writing and talking as though it's 1800 in VRMland. Too much jargon, too many complex ideas invoked by reference. To follow our threads you'll need backgrounds in constitutional and contract law, IT architecture, startup culture, microeconomics, social science, software UX, and graduate studies in social media. It's juicy and intellectually rich. 

And it's a bit much. 

I just hope it doesn't take 200 years to invent how to talk VRM before you're out of middle school. 

- phil