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nevertheless visualize technologies we've never seen and
barely understand. Often, just organizing moving parts in
a meaningful way is enough to qualify us as experts.

Technology we've skimmed
A reader can apply the same organizing concepts to
libraries and single volumes, Bayard said. It's a matter of
perspective. "Skimming books without reading them does
not in any way prevent you from commenting on them,"
he wrote. "It's even possible that this is the most efficient
way to absorb books, respecting their inherent depth and
Navigating the richness without getting lost in the details."
POS library Many sales managers would agree with that statement;
they frequently advise merchant level salespeople to
avoid getting too mired in technical details during sales
presentations. Keep it high level, they say.
By Dale S. Laszig
Technology we've heard about
or almost a year after I purchased How to talk
about books you haven't read by Pierre Bayard, I Another way to not read a book is to read a review or
didn't talk about it, because, well, I hadn't read listen to what other people say about it. In fact, certain
F it. Bayard, a college professor, has spoken about publications review books in such detail that the reviews
‒ and even taught ‒ books he hasn't read, an apparently themselves add depth and dimension to the original book.
common practice in academia. Sometimes book reviews even aggregate a collection of
books on the same topic and create a comparative analysis.
Bayard dedicates one chapter each to four forms he
identifies as non-reading: never opening, skimming, Payments industry trade publications organize trending
hearing about and forgetting books. "We must not forget topics, regulatory issues and a variety of information in
that even a prodigious reader never has access to more than similar ways by parsing important concepts into manageable
an infinitesimal fraction of the books that exist," Bayard segments that professionals on the run can easily absorb.
wrote. "As a result, unless he abstains definitively from all Bayard agrees this tactic can save a lot of time.
conversation and all writing, he will find himself forever
obliged to express his thoughts on books he hasn't read." Technology we've forgotten
Bayard describes reading as an inevitable process of
When I finally got around to reading the book, I thought forgetting. "Even as I read, I start to forget what I have read,
of all the ways in which we talk about payment technology and this process is unavoidable," he wrote. "It extends to
without directly experiencing it. Indeed, there is no way to the point where it's as though I haven't read the book at all,
directly experience the moving parts that surround us, so so that in effect I find myself rejoining the ranks of non-
we organize them into conceptual frameworks in much the readers, where I should no doubt have remained in the first
same way a librarian would catalog a vast supply of books. place."
Technology we haven't read
I'm sure many non-technical people can relate to that
Bayard elaborates on the library theme by describing a statement, especially in situations where they are required
librarian in The Man Without Qualities, an unfinished novel to demonstrate a new technology or explain the interaction
by Robert Musil. The librarian is fiercely protective of the between smartcards and POS devices to prospective clients.
books in his care, but he has never read any of them.
Bayard said all literature provides a "fragile and temporary
"Rather than any particular book, it is indeed these kind of knowledge," which is a good reason to keep our
connections and correlations that should be the focus of training manuals close and our engineers closer.
the cultivated individual, much as the railroad switchman
should focus on the relations between trains – that is, their
crossings and transfers – rather than the contents of any Dale S. Laszig, Senior Staff Writer at The Green Sheet and Managing
specific convoy," Bayard wrote. Director at DSL Direct LLC, is a payments industry journalist and content
provider. She can be reached at dale@dsldirectllc.com and on Twitter at
Doesn't that correspond to how we think about electronic @DSLdirect.
transactions? Many of us who don't read or write code can

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