Technical Writing in a Technological Age:

Changes in the Classroom and the Workplace

Stuart A. Selber

Introduction

Over the past decade, new media and computer technologies have permeated both the technical writing classroom and the technical writing workplace. Documents written for, and used in, these two contexts no longer include just verbal text messages and simple line art printed on standard, 20 pound white paper, as they often did in the 1970s and early 1980s. Technical writing documents today appear not just in print but in electronic form, and in electronic form these documents include multiple media such as high-resolution graphics, audio and video clips, animation sequences, and visual effects. Couple this expanded electronic form of technical writing with Internet protocols that allow for the global exchange of information, and it becomes clear that distinct challenges and opportunities exist for the field of technical writing in a technological age. What is the nature of these challenges and opportunities in the classroom and the workplace? And, what is the relationship between new media, computer technologies, and the changes currently evident in these two contexts?

This article outlines some broad responses from technical writers and teachers to these difficult questions. Although the challenges and opportunities associated with change in the future are difficult, if not impossible, to predict, this article provides a brief starting place for students and teachers interested in the influences of new media and computer technologies in technical writing contexts. To supplement the discussion, and in the spirit of opening spaces for other perspectives on these issues, the article provides a list of additional readings for both students and teachers of technical writing. Some of these readings exist in print form and can be borrowed from a library; others exist in electronic form and are available on the Internet.

The article begins with a discussion of the non-neutrality of technology and three cultural myths that discourage us from examining technology critically. The article then discusses the nature of technology and change in the technical writing classroom and the technical writing workplace.

The Non-Neutrality of Technology and the Nature of Change

Too often in discussions of computers and education or computers and work, computer technologies, either implicitly or explicitly, are considered powerful agents of change. Computers, it is often claimed,

• make people better writers and more productive workers;
• enhance learning and provide a richer learning environment;
• flatten educational and organizational hierarchies; and
• improve the bottom line.

It is also often claimed that computers cure a wide range of social ills, including racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. One common socially based claim about computers is that, because they hide markers of status such as physical appearances, speech patterns, and clothing styles, electronic environments are more egalitarian than face-to-face environments.

An astute observer might ask, what is so problematic about claims that computers cause positive changes in the classroom and the workplace? On some level, of course, computers are indeed responsible for change. A globally distributed team of technical writers, sales representatives, and product managers can meet in cyberspace in previously impossible ways to accomplish work using a document database, electronic mail, real-time conferencing environments, and electronic whiteboard. In a desktop video-conferencing setting a student in the United States can meet with a student in another country to explore cultural and political differences. Without a robust technological infrastructure, these kinds of meetings would simply not be possible. And, of course, computers have automated some extremely tedious tasks associated with technical writing, such as spell-checking a proposal, creating an index for a manual, or changing the typeface of all first-level headings in a report.

But the answer is not so simple. As researchers and scholars in the humanities and social sciences have pointed out, computers are artifacts of an industrial culture. Computers, along with other technologies like paper, pencils, and even language itself, are created by human beings at particular times and in response to particular circumstances. What this situated view of technology development means is that computers are not merely neutral devices void of human interests and motivations. Rather, when we unbox a new computer, connect to an online service, or purchase a piece of software, a wide range of decisions have already been made for us by the designers of these products. These decisions influence how we read and write, how we collaborate, how we share files with one another, and which program features are obvious and which ones are buried deep in the computer system.

Discussion Prompt

If computers are artifacts of an industrial culture, and therefore imbued with design biases, why don't we tend to notice these biases? There are a number of reasons for this, but here are three cultural myths about technology that often discourage us from noticing design biases.

Myth #1: Technology and Progress are Intimately Connected

In Western culture, there is a strong belief that in order for a society to advance, technological developments must occur. In everyday life, this myth is compelling. An automobile allows someone to live in a quiet neighborhood but travel to a noisy city to work. Medicine makes us feel better and live longer. In our culture, when there is some kind of problem, such as how to reduce the cost of office work, we can usually find a technical fix—in this case, automating part of the paperwork process. Theorists and researchers align this myth—that technology and progress are intimately connected—with particular forms of political and economic systems. John Street (1992, p. 20), a theorist of the politics of technology, argues that this myth is often perpetuated by two views:

• technical change as progress is a natural part of human development, a part that allows us to control nature and reduce our vulnerability in the world;
• technical change as progress is a natural part of the competitive marketplace, in which new innovations in technology are considered to be superior to old ones.

What these views mask, of course, is that one person's progress is another person's regress: the automobile that allows someone to live outside the city in which they work creates pollution, fragments communities, increases our dependence on fuel, and creates congestion for those living in the city. The key here is to understand in any particular situation how "progress" is being defined and who profits from any particular definition. Educational critic Neil Postman reminds us that technologies are Faustian bargains, both "giving and taking away, sometimes in equal measure, sometimes more in one way than the other" (1995, p. 41).

Discussion Prompt

Myth #2: Access to Technology Automatically Leads to Productive Uses of Technology

One issue we hear a lot about in discussions of computers is access to the technology. The gap between the haves and have-nots in our society seems to be widening and not shrinking in a technological age. In a special issue on cyberspace in Time magazine, Suneel Ratan reported that access to new technologies like computers generally breaks down along traditional class lines (1995, p. 25). Here are some of Ratan's observations:

• wealthy and upper-middle-class families form the bulk of the 30% of American households that currently own computers;
• wealthier school districts tend to have equipment that is unavailable to poorer ones;
• schools in the more affluent suburbs have twice as many computers per student as their less-well-funded urban counterparts;
• a working person who is able to use a computer earns 15% more than someone in a similar job who cannot.

These observations, of course, should give us pause—very real inequities exist in schools and in the workplace. But will improved access to technology necessarily shrink the gap between the haves and have-nots? And will such access necessarily lead to improvements in instruction and work? This second myth would lead us to believe so, but this is not the whole story. For example, simply installing computers in schools will not alleviate the problems associated with under-paid and under-supported teachers, students from economically poor homes or from homes where they are not encouraged to study, or unsafe streets that distract students from focusing on their work. In some ways, computers might even exacerbate some of these problems. Similarly, putting computers in the workplace will not alleviate the problems associated with outmoded managerial perspectives, competitive environments that lead to unproductive working relationships, or under-skilled workers. In fact, some researchers have argued quite convincingly that computers, in certain cases, have de-skilled the workforce, and, moreover, that the payoffs associated with computers can be difficult to detect and measure.

Discussion Prompt

Myth #3: Good Technologies are Transparent

If you were to follow discussions of design in such diverse fields as architecture, industrial engineering, and computer science, you would notice a concern for the smooth integration of new products into the lives of people. A technical writer should not have to worry about how the desktop publishing program works, so the logic goes, because what the writer is really interested in doing is creating the report that the boss needs at the end of the week. An accountant is interested in balancing the company's books, not in the inner-workings of a computer spreadsheet. A sales manager wants a report on last month's sales organized by item number, not a treatise on how the database manipulates data. Mark Weiser, a scientist at Xerox working on the next generation of computers, argues that "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it" (1991, p. 94). At first glance, such a perspective seems valid. Demands on students and professionals are so great that just getting through one project can seem like a major victory. We purchase technologies to support our work and make it more efficient, not because we have some inherent interest in programming. Yet, ironically, this myth can actually work to disempower technology users.

Even among the most conscientious of designers, particular ways of knowing and working find their way into products. Your word-processing program works the way it does not because it has to, but because the software designers determined that a particular design was productive. However, there is no one best way to design the word processor, particularly if you think about all of the possible users. Users differ in their backgrounds, educations, learning styles, and worldviews. The desktop metaphor that is so common in personal computers is modeled after the corporate workplace and appeals to people who understand how files, folders, and hierarchies work, and how business is conducted in that setting. This same metaphor is less meaningful to children, blue-collar workers, housewives, and other people who historically may have little experience in a corporate environment. When technologies are deemed "good" because they are transparent in everyday life, these discussions of design biases are discouraged. When we are encouraged to look through technologies to our work rather than at the technologies of our work, we perpetuate the false assumption that the relationship between a technology and its design is "natural" and not conventional. Moreover, we discourage users from examining how they might modify or work around technologies that fail to support their backgrounds, educations, learning styles, and worldviews.

Discussion Prompt

Seeing Beyond the Myths

To develop the critical literacies needed to work productively and responsibly with technology, we need to understand that (1) computers are artifacts of an industrial culture, and that (2) cultural myths can deter us from seeing the biases designed into computer systems. However, these two understandings alone fall short of helping us consider issues of change in the technical writing classroom and the technical writing workplace.

As the discussion of cultural myths indicates, change—productive or unproductive—is not automatic or guaranteed when computer technologies are introduced into a new context (indeed, computers are often used to support existing states of affairs). Rather, change occurs when computers are introduced into a new context in ways that consider not just the new hardware and software, but a wide range of social, political, organizational, and economic forces. For example, in one study of the influences on hypertext development and use in technical writing programs, it was discovered that a variety of factors in pedagogical, institutional, and industrial areas help determine if technologies encourage and/or discourage change—among them, the instructional goals of teachers, the roles that teachers assume in the classroom, the backgrounds of students, the hardware and software available for use, the type of academic department in which a program exists, other curricular offerings in a department, and reward and recognition systems (Selber, 1997).

As another example, consider some of the factors at work in dynamic corporate environments in which new computers are integrated: the standards of old computers, policies and procedures, group dynamics, interpersonal relationships, work patterns, mission statements, and managerial philosophies. As you can see, technology is one factor that helps determine if change will occur in the classroom or the workplace, but it is not the only factor. Of course, some factors may carry more weight than others, but change is rarely, if ever, determined by a single factor.

Based on this discussion of the non-neutrality of technology and the nature of change in technical writing contexts, we might revise the claims made about computers mentioned at the beginning of this section. Computers can make people better writers and more productive workers; computers can enhance learning and provide a richer learning environment; computers can flatten educational and organizational hierarchies that stifle creativity; and computers can improve the bottom line. Computers can even help us cure a wide range of social ills. But these changes will not occur automatically just by purchasing new hardware and software. If computers are going to encourage change in the technical writing classroom and the technical writing workplace, their uses will need to parallel shifts in the instructional, social, political, organizational, and personal factors operating in these environments.

The rest of this article discusses the nature of technology and change in the technical writing classroom and the technical writing workplace.

Technology, Change, and the Technical Writing Classroom

Computers have encouraged many changes in the technical writing classroom. For many years and in a variety of contexts, teachers have explored the ways in which computers might productively support their instructional goals as well as enhance opportunities for students. Perhaps the best summary of these explorations has been offered by Robert Kozma and Jerome Johnston. In their article, "The Technological Revolution Comes to the Classroom," these authors share their experiences co-directing the Program on Learning, Teaching, and Technology at the National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning (NCRIPTAL), as well as the EDUCOM/NCRIPTAL Higher Education Software Awards Program. Kozma and Johnston spent four years examining over 700 software applications and instructional innovations developed for the classroom. Relying on faculty perspectives from 18 different disciplines, these authors identified what they consider to be "91 outstanding examples of how the computer is making a difference in higher education" (1991, p. 16). From these 91 examples, Kozma and Johnston outlined seven types of changes that seem common in computer-supported learning environments. Six of these changes have implications for the technical writing classroom.

Change #1: From Reception to Engagement

Traditional approaches to teaching often position students in passive roles as learners. In post-secondary classrooms, for example, it is not uncommon for student experience and knowledge to be ignored, or for students to be expected to simply absorb the expert knowledge provided by teachers and textbooks. But these traditional views are being challenged across the disciplines, as instructors begin to understand the value of actively engaged learning. In an important book on creating computer-based classrooms, Haymore, Ringstaff, and Dwyer (1997, p. 14) summarize the movement from teacher-centered "instruction" to student-centered "construction" as follows:

	Instruction	Construction
Classroom Activity	teacher centered didactic	learner centered interactive
Teacher Role	fact teller always expert	collaborator sometimes expert
Student Role	listener always learner	collaborator sometimes expert
Instructional Emphasis	facts memorization	relationships inquiry and invention
Concept of Knowledge	accumulation of facts	transformation of facts
Demonstration of Success	quantity	quality of understanding
Assessment	norm referenced multiple choice items	criterion referenced portfolios and performances
Technology Use	drill and practice	communication, collaboration, information access, expression

Notice that the last row in this summary addresses technology. Teachers are using technology not only to support rote learning but also to stimulate engaged learning. Computers now enable communication, collaboration, information access, and expression in the classroom. In the technical writing classroom, students still listen to lectures and presentations and draft reports in small groups using papers and pencils. But these traditional activities are enhanced by computers, which are used to structure working and learning environments in which invention, collaboration, and production activities are fully supported by sophisticated computer programs specifically developed for technical writing and communication tasks. As the summary of instruction versus construction above indicates, students in these computer-enhanced environments assume new and expanded roles, while instructional emphases and assessment measures are redefined in generative ways.

Change #2: From the Classroom to the Real World

One common complaint about traditional classrooms is that they too often fail to prepare students adequately for their professions, either by neglecting to focus on the functional applications of theoretical ideas or by ignoring the complex factors in professional settings that influence how work gets done and how decisions get made. Although these complaints derive from a legitimate contemporary debate over the role of educational institutions, many forward-thinking educators are already preparing students in both creative and responsible ways to become members of professional communities. As an applied discipline with roots in the military-industrial complex, the field of technical writing has concerned itself historically with the relations between the classroom and the workplace.

Technical writing pedagogy has relied on a wide range of approaches in representing the world of work, including case studies, guest speakers, collaborations, simulations, and internship experiences. Thoughtful uses of computer technologies have expanded and enhanced these approaches, providing technical writing students with increased opportunities to experience, and model, the professional communities they hope to join after graduation. For example, asynchronous and synchronous communication technologies such as electronic mail and Internet Relay Chat (IRC) allow students to interact with professional technical writers working around the globe. Computer networks connect technical writing classes at different universities to simulate the kind of distributed document production that occurs in multinational companies. And the World Wide Web provides access to a vast array of corporate documents that can add productive complexity to the rhetorical analyses of texts, as well as provides a shared space for the exchange of pedagogical and professional development materials. Other innovative uses of computers are being developed to bridge the classroom and workplace.

Change #3: From Text to Multiple Representations

As briefly mentioned in the introduction to this article, text-based modes of expression have dominated technical writing contexts, with the printing press serving as the most influential technology of writing and reading. Although graphics have been included in technical writing documents since at least the English Renaissance, for a variety of political and technological reasons the written word was most often employed in the creation of documents for technical use. But with the advent of computer technologies, a wider range of expression modes are available.

Technical writing documents still often include text, but new technologies allow for visual and aural dimensions, making multimedia applications common in the classroom. These multiple representations made possible by computer technologies can enhance learning, as students select and customize the instructional approaches and presentations that align with their motivations and styles of learning. In technical writing classrooms, for example, computer-based conversations provide alternative discussion environments that can be qualitatively different than face-to-face environments. Hypertext tutorials offer multiple paths for navigating and engaging instructional materials and learning spaces. And advanced word-processing features allow writers and readers to represent the same material spatially in different ways. In addition, user-friendly authoring programs allow students to build environments with multiple representations of technical writing content relatively quickly.

Change #4: From Coverage to Mastery

Critical observers of the use of computers in the classroom have charged that unproductive tasks such as "drill-and-practice" exercises and passive class presentations simply transfer harmful instructional techniques from the traditional classroom to the computer classroom. But not all traditional uses of computers are unproductive. Created and used carefully as supplemental materials, computer-based exercises and presentations can be quite effective in helping students reinforce course content on their own time and at their own pace, freeing up class time for more creative and collaborative work. Computer-based tutorials for technical writing courses can show students how to operate essential software programs for document production, model technical writing styles that are often difficult to learn, and generate questions that are important to ask at various stages of the writing process. Computer-based presentations can also illuminate key course points, animate dynamic processes, and amplify technical writing examples. Moreover, the World Wide Web can be used as an archive to store lecture notes and videos that are available for student review on demand.

Change #5: From Isolation to Interconnection

In a broad way, the evolution of the computer classroom parallels the evolution of technical writing research, theory, and teaching. Early studies and inquiries in the field were concerned with the ways individual writers wrote and with their cognitive processes as writers. But increasingly attention is now being paid to how writing is influenced not just by individual cognitive processes but by social processes as well.

The first computer classrooms typically included stand-alone computers that encouraged writers to work in isolation on their projects. The easiest way to share files in this environment was by using "sneaker" net: students would save files on a floppy disk and hand carry the disk to their collaborators. Discussion in computer classrooms with stand-alone machines was limited to face-to-face discussion, as no technological infrastructure existed to support online conversations. Local area networks (LANs) expanded the capabilities of computer classrooms by allowing writers to share files and printers, and encouraged teachers to use network-based collaborative writing software programs for online conversations, email exchanges, and group writing activities. Wide area networks (WANs) and the Internet further expanded the capabilities of the computer classroom, connecting students to databases, libraries, and professionals around the world.

Technical writers not only collaborate to produce workplace documents, but their interactions with other writers, texts, and contexts create a social space in which the interconnection of ideas is illuminated. Computers help support the view of writing as a social activity, as teachers rely on networked technologies to connect rather than isolate concepts, facts, students, and ideas.

Change #6: From Products to Processes

Another shift in technical writing pedagogy is from a focus on products (e.g., manuals, memos, reports) to the processes used to generate those products. A glance at early technical writing textbooks reveals numerous chapters on techniques, applications, and genres, but very little discussion of collaboration, document production, internationalization, or ethical decision-making. Although current textbooks still focus on formats and conventions, they also examine the complex processes technical writers use to create usable and socially responsible documents.

Technical writing teachers now evaluate both the final product and the writing process, giving each equal weight. Computer programs can be used to support this shift from product to process in the classroom. In the 1980s desktop publishing programs helped maintain a focus on the technical writing product by providing powerful production tools for page layout and document design. But computer-based writing and communication programs now also include process support features. Specific applications have been developed that model the composing processes technical writers employ when creating technical documents. Computer-supported cooperative work tools allow students to engage in the kinds of collaborative activities that are common during research phases of a project. And computer-based revising and editing prompts help students understand the kinds of questions that are productive to ask in any writing project, including questions about audience, purpose, context, organization, and ethics.

Discussion Prompt

Technology, Change, and the Technical Writing Workplace

Computers have also encouraged change in the technical writing workplace. Some of the changes most often reported by technical writers have occurred in the following five areas:

Change Area #1: Document Forms

The development of elegant computer-based delivery systems over the last decade has encouraged technical writers to publish their documents in a variety of electronic forms. Users of technical writing still often demand printed documents, but electronic documents have become more common as users increasingly work and read online. As an example of the changes in document forms encouraged by computer technologies, consider the documentation provided with the purchase of a new software program. In the late 1980s, software users were typically given a tutorial, user's guide, reference manual, quick start guide, and keyboard template, all in print form. Today, users still receive an enormous amount of documentation, but much of it comes online and takes advantage of the computer's unique ability to store, multiply structure, and retrieve text. For example, the online help system that comes with a word-processing program includes procedural and reference material that is easily accessible and searchable. Computer-based tutorials dynamically instruct users in the operation of word-processing functions. And balloon or "pop-up" help conveniently defines and describes interface features. Other computer-based document forms are found at World Wide Web sites and in Internet discussion groups. These forms include instructional videos, multimedia and hypertext programs, and forums for asking technical questions and getting help with specific computer problems.

Change Area #2: Roles and Responsibilities

New document forms have required technical writers to assume expanded roles and responsibilities in the workplace. Technical writers no longer just create and edit written text, but are involved in a wide range of tasks related to the planning, designing, and testing of multimedia content for emerging document forms. These expanded tasks are reflected in the job titles now given to technical writers in the workplace. Some organizations still use the title Technical Writer, but other organizations use more expansive titles, including Technical Communicator, Information Architect, or Usability Engineer. IBM calls its technical writers Information Developers, recognizing that writers in the workplace today are involved in all aspects of document development. Henrietta Shirk has identified new roles for technical communicators in the computer age. These roles include user interface expert, product designer, information architect, customer trainer, process facilitator, media selection consultant, interpersonal communication advisor, and usability specialist (1997, pp. 361–366). According to Shirk, a focus on job functions versus titles "portrays the technical communicator's role as moving toward broader responsibilities as the result of technological influences" (p. 366). If you examine job ads in the field of technical writing, it will not be difficult to identify other expanded roles and responsibilities encouraged by computer technologies.

Change Area #3: Production Processes

Before desktop and Internet publishing systems were available to technical writers, they relied centrally on graphic designers, typesetters, and others to help them produce documents. This reliance allowed technical writers to benefit from the expertise of other communication specialists, but it also reduced their control over the document development process. For example, a typesetter might require two months to produce a user's guide, requiring a technical writer to finalize the content before the design of the product the guide documents is even finished. Such an enormous amount of lead time can result in inaccurate documentation, as the design of a product continues to change until just before it is released in the marketplace. But the computer-based publishing systems available to technical writers today allow them to have much more control over all aspects of the production process. Using a desktop publishing program, graphics application, and laser printer, for example, a technical writer can create quite sophisticated print publications on their own. More complex computer hardware and software allow technical writers to publish online documents on CD-ROM or the World Wide Web for global consumption. Assuming more control over production processes, however, requires technical writers to expand their skill sets and learn about document design, graphic design, publishing techniques, and new media, as discussed above under new roles and responsibilities.

Change Area #4: Collaborative Practices

Technical writers have always collaborated on some level in the process of creating non-academic documents, usually by working with an editor or by relying on existing documents for background information, content, and conventions. Technical writers have also collaborated on the writing of a single document by dividing it into logical sections to be written by individuals (a divide-and-conquer strategy), or by taking turns working through an entire document. In workplace settings, computer technologies support and make more convenient these traditional collaborative practices, but they can also challenge and expand them if an organization is interested in exploring new ways of working together that take advantage of diverse perspectives.

A robust and mature set of computer applications now exist to support online interactions, and these applications are often inexpensive and require relatively little technical support. Burnett and Clark (1997, p. 195) summarize some of the benefits of computer technologies for collaborative practices, arguing that computers can be helpful in the areas of process and task support. In short, these authors claim that computers can:

• provide options for public or private structured interactions that span time and space;
• reduce the impact of factors recognized as influential in face-to-face interactions (e.g., age, ethnicity, regional accents);
• provide resources for managing, sharing, and storing multiple sources of information;
• provide tools for problem solving and decision making;
• encourage immediate feedback from diverse reviewers at multiple stages in a process.

Of course, these benefits are not guaranteed simply by installing electronic collaboration technologies. In fact, management practices and approaches may need to be reconsidered in this new context, as Michael Schrage (1990) has cogently pointed out. Moreover, electronic collaboration can introduce entirely new issues and problems that must be weighed against the potential benefits that might be derived for technical writers.

Change Area #5: Organizational Structures

Management theorists have argued that increasingly corporations are less hierarchical in how they conduct business, modeling in their organizational structures the flexibility needed to compete in a global marketplace. According to Kanter (1989, p. 88), in corporations adopting such new organizational structures

• a greater number and variety of channels for workers are available to take action and exert influence;
• relations of power shift from vertical to horizontal (from chains of command to peer networks);
• distinctions between managers and those managed diminishes;
• external relations are increasingly important sources of internal power and influence;
• as a result of the first four changes, the career development of workers is less intelligible but also less circumscribed.

Computer technologies have been associated with these changes evident in today's organizations. For example, computer networks in the workplace have enabled technical writers to influence a broader set of company conversations and access documents ordinarily not available to them as compartmentalized workers. Perhaps one of the most interesting changes associated with evolving organizational structures is in the area of telecommuting, a new way of working at home that can provide technical writers with increased flexibility and motivation (in 1995 Wired magazine concluded that 9.2 million Americans telecommute, and that by the year 2003 that number could grow to reflect one-fifth of all US workers). One can easily imagine a scenario in which the work of a technical writer or editor could get accomplished in a home office using network technologies, and research is beginning to emerge that documents good social and economic reasons for encouraging individuals to develop non-traditional work patterns (see Doheny–Farina, 1996, pp. 87–96). But telecommuting, as with other computer-based activities, is not without its problems. One case study of an experienced telecommuter reported that although the worker was productive, it was difficult for that person to progress within their company without an office presence (Doheny–Farina, 1996, p 90).

Discussion Prompt

Conclusion

This article outlines some of the changes in the technical writing classroom and workplace encouraged by computer technologies. These changes have been reported by technical writers, teachers, and others in the published literature on new media and Internet technologies. In outlining these changes, this article takes an environmental approach to the development, integration, and use of computer technologies in technical writing contexts, arguing that changes occurring in the classroom and workplace are a result of not just computer technologies but of a wide range of social and organizational factors operating in those contexts. If technical writers are going to understand, and attempt to predict, the nature of change in an emerging discipline like technical writing, they will need to adopt a situated view of computer technologies as non-neutral devices.

References

Burnett, Rebecca E, & David Clark. (1997). Shaping technologies: The complexity of electronic collaborative interaction. In Stuart A. Selber (Ed.), Computers and technical communication: Pedagogical and programmatic perspectives (pp. 171–199). Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Doheny–Farina, Stephen. The wired neighborhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. (1989, November/December). The new managerial work. Harvard Business Review (85-92).

Kozma, Robert B., & Jerome Johnston. (1991, January/February). The technological revolution comes to the classroom. Change (pp. 10-23).

Postman, Neil. (1995). The end of education: Redefining the value of school. New York: Knopf.

Ratan, Suneel. (1995, spring). A new divide between haves and have-nots? Time (pp. 25-26).

Sandholtz, Judith Haymore, Cathy Ringstaff, & David C. Dwyer. (1997). Teaching with technology: Creating student-centered classrooms. New York: College Teachers Press.

Schrage, Michael. (1990). Shared minds: The new technologies of collaboration. New York: Random House.

Selber, Stuart A. (1997). Hypertext spheres of influence in technical communication instructional contexts. In Stuart A. Selber (Ed.), Computers and technical communication: Pedagogical and programmatic perspectives (pp. 17–43). Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. (1997). New roles for technical communicators in the computer age. In Stuart A. Selber (Ed.), Computers and technical communication: Pedagogical and programmatic perspectives(pp. 353–374). Greenwich, CT: Ablex.

Street, John. (1992). Politics and technology. New York: The Guilford Press.

Weiser, Mark. (1991, September). The computer for the 21st century. Scientific American (pp. 94–104).

Related Readings in Print

Bender, Gretchen, & Timothy Druckery, Eds. (1994). Culture on the brink: Ideologies of technology. Seattle, WA: Bay Press.

Forester, Tom, Ed. (1989). Computers in the human context: Information technology, productivity, and people. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Gurak, Laura J., & Christine M. Silker, Eds. (1996, November). Special issue of Technical Communication on cyberspace.

Hawisher, Gail E., & Cynthia L. Selfe, Eds. (1997). Literacy, technology, and society: Confronting the issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Malone, Thomas W., & John F. Rockart. (1991, September). Computers, networks, and the corporation. Scientific American (pp. 128–136).

Selber, Stuart A., Ed. (1996, December). Special issue of IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication on computers in the technical communication classroom.

Sullivan, Patricia, & Jennie Dautermann, Eds. (1996). Electronic literacies in the workplace: Technologies of writing. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Vitanza, Victor J, Ed. (1996). CyberReader. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Related Readings Online

The following online journals consider the intersections between new media and writing and communication. They should be of interest to technical writing students and professionals.

Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine

Journal of Computer Mediated Communication

Journal of Technology Education

Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy

RhetNet: A Cyberjournal for Rhetoric and Writing