Longo, Bernadette. Human + Machine Culture: Where We Work in Digital Literacy for Technical Communication: 21st Century Theory & Practice. Editor Spilka, R. Routledge, 2009.
I’m bundling Albers and Longo here because they provide a nice transition into my first minor exam, which considers the relationship of Technical Communication to Information Architecture (IA). Both Albers and Longo are addressing the expanding role (more precisely, the expanding skill set and tool box) of the modern technical communicator. IA and related activities (web design, information modeling, human-computer interaction, etc.) are very much a part of that expansion, which provides one space of intersection between the disciplines.
With Albers, we see a re-articulation of the tools vs. technology issue (DreamWeaver is a tool which you might teach in the tech writing classroom; markup languages used in DreamWeaver are technologies that you might also teach in the tech writing classroom). His central point is one that we made for WRT 417 – we tend to confuse tools with technology (RoboHelp is a tool, but help authoring is comprised of various technologies).
“More than dealing with issues of how to use one tool to perform a task, we need to teach and consider how using various tool’s features or technologies affect the documentation process” (Albers 267).
Albers does provide a useful schematic of the relationship of various activities to Technical Communication. Albers’ schematic places Technical Communication as a hub within a wheel. Spokes emanating from the hub connect to Information Architecture, Information Design, Management, and Human Factors. Technical communicators need to “coherently participate in the conversation occurring around the cross-functional and interdisciplinary team table” (Albers 269).
The terminal points at the end of the spokes will, no doubt, have spokes of their own as we move through the remainder of the readings. I’ll use the schematic as the foundation to an argument/position map similar to the one developed for the major exam.
Longo (who I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed -- every practicing technical communicator should be required to read Spurious Coin), is also making a claim that practicing technical communicators need to be aware of technology – of how computer mediated environments shape cultures based on those the technology includes AND excludes. “Technical communicators especially need to understand the human + machine culture, since we operate within it and it profoundly influences the communications we craft and their effects on groups of people… technical communicators also have the power to invite people into the community with/through technological knowledge and teach them the rules – or not… technical communication is a techno-scientific tool through which value is assigned to knowledge” (148-54).
A heady piece – the implications of digital literacy on conceptions of culture, community and knowledge. In the past decade, scholars such as Longo and Albers have used these claims of disciplinary expansion and inclusion to align the discipline and practice of technical communication with the likes of information architecture, information design, and human-computer interaction.
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