Re: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?

Subject: Re: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:47:04 -0700

I have my doubts about this one. I think control enhancements will still keep
most of the maintenance and repair operations out of the hands of end users, and
the "future enhanced" spinning wheel will do more but require no more user skill
than the old models peoples' grandmothers used to teach them to use. If
equipment becomes more design-for-service oriented and moves away from
disposability, the maintenance and repair manuals will still be there, but as
long as the "back to basics" trend doesn't go all the way back to people having
their stuff made locally by village smithies, the people doing the related work
will be providers of repair services. There will always be some people techy
and ambitious enough to want the Sams Photofact book, but most will bring their
stuff to the repair shop or call the traveling fixers the way they used to back
in the days of tube radios and TVs and cars with distributor caps and
carburetors.

The transition of tech writers' jobs *back* to being more interesting and more
down-to-earth, but requiring more knowledge of what goes on under the hood.has
already been in motion for some time now.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message -----
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
When your equipment is solid and meant to last, you'll tend to learn a bit about
how to maintain and fix it, rather than count on throwing it away and replacing
it because a new one /i/s/ used to be cheaper than a repair.




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Follow-Ups:

References:
Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?: From: Daniel Ng
Re: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?: From: Gene Kim-Eng
RE: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?: From: Sharon Burton
RE: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?: From: McLauchlan, Kevin

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