Re: Where information comes from (back OT)

[SIANNON -at- VISUS -dot- JNJ -dot- com]

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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