Re: Where information comes from (back OT)

Subject: Re: Where information comes from (back OT)
From: SIANNON -at- VISUS -dot- JNJ -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 15:50:40

Tom Sullivan and others make some interesting points regarding the impact a
changing sociopolitical consciousness has upon the integrity of
intellectual property rights.

How does this tie back in to Technical Communications? Here's a few
thoughts:

Tech writing as an industry has its fingers in several forms of
writing that directly affect the function of both business and political
entities; aside from user documentation, there are also policies and
procedures, regulatory compliance docs, vendor research, various proposals,
and so forth. We shape the rules.
One thing I'm surprised has not come up yet is how these two entities
(corporate and political) are becoming more and more alike, and starting to
operate under the same paradigms in their communications and culture.
Since 1994, at least (first explicit article about it I can remember), I
know that international corporations have entered into contracts with
various governments that allow them to be excluded from specified
government regulations and laws.
In a global marketplace, where corporations negotiate with governments
in a nigh-equal manner (e.g., 'we offer money and product accessibility to
you if you offer real estate and labor resources to us'-- B2B or B2G? it
works for both), we are forced to turn to international standards to
communicate across language and culture barriers. And here we, as
technical writers, return to the crest of the wave. It is we who are
called to implement and appease these standards, sometimes as mutable as
waves themselves; we who craft documents that serve in the boardrooms and
offices of agencies and corporations both, that play ambassador from one of
these converging worlds unto the other.


Intellectual property rights are a type of law. They differ from
country to country. Ethics, while sometimes assumed to be objectively
quantifyable, are often modified by environment and circumstance, and thus
subjectively determined. They differ from person to person.
As corporations evolve outside of national confines, and occasionally
outside of pure physical confines (distributed computing, anyone?),
intellectual property will need to be addressed on a global scale.
National laws do not apply globally. Those pieces of international law that
*can* be crocheted together will have a direct impact upon technical
communications, because technical communicators sit as ambassadors between
worlds, and we will be the ones to determine how to phrase the documents
that support those laws, and abide by them, and make use of them to protect
the rights we are herein discussing.


Shauna Iannone
Tech Writer, American Computing Technologies,
currently supporting 3GT CIM at Vistakon
--------------------------------------------
Opinions expressed in this post are solely my own.
--------------------------------------------
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure,
program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects."
-- Lazarus Long

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