Salvo carves out a more detailed position in the proximal space that Still and Albers identify between the TCer and the end user. Here, Salvo is looking at IA as a practice – as an activity; some set of procedures accomplished rather that something conceptual. Specifically, he wants to see IA become a critical practice for the TCer. In this way, Salvo is looking for TC to not only reclaim activities recently lost to HCI, IA, and usability studies, he wants to claim IA’s activities as those belonging to TC.
Ah, the discipline wars…
“Technical communicators are not necessarily technical experts; they are information architects who practice a rhetorical craft necessary to build solutions that address the contextual needs of users.”
Salvo see the TCer as an “informed rhetor” who moves away from the common practice of describing the world to a practitioner who interacts with and engages the world (there are hints of Brooke in this call). “The technical rhetor interacts with technology … by creating the context for technological design … the metaphor information architect … ably represents the demands made the technical rhetor.”
Similar to Still’s and Albers’ proximal space, Salvo sees IA (as activity) occurring between analysis and performances that inform the technical rhetor’s design. IA as an art, science, and business of organizing communication. Yet going to back to my earlier comments, when scholars attempt to move IA this far into activity and performance, it feel more like ID.
Back to the TCer doing more than describing: the challenge is to move from describing the rhetorical situation to engaging the situation. “I do not expect technical communication practitioners and faculty to look beyond documentation as the predominant activity of technical communication professionals [thank you!] … Information architecture presents an opportunity to shift the focus of TC from end-user documentation, and from short-term needs, to the critical articulation of the technological future of organizations and in culture at large… Information architecture is not a protected space from which to observe technocultural development but a place within and among technology users and designers where technical rhetoricians engage technologies and social relationships.”
Salvo is making this call in reaction to the devalued position of the modern TCer. He cites outsourcing as one cause of this devaluation, but it is more complicated than that. The ambiguity of technology and information production tools is more to blame than outsourcing. As knowledge workers develop the skills to create and manage information products (see Spinuzzi), the role of the TCer is marginalized. Casting about for traction, IA (as a discipline) becomes a space in which the trained TCer can feel comfortable – the nomenclature and language is the same. A deeper look at once inside reveals that applied IA theories look strikingly similar what the TCer has been doing for a good long time. With a simple tile change and new business card, the TCer is now an Information Architect value, which went unrecognized in the past, back to the organization.
In this way I see IA not as something entirely new or unique. The TCer has long performed the activities associated with IA. Labeling these activities as such – as a new discipline, practice, and field – allows the TCer to draw a distinction between the practices of the skilled and self-taught knowledge worker and the formerly educated and trained TCer – the informed rhetor.
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