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One of the themes I occasionally expound on on relates to the impact of
technological revolutions on our trade as writers. As Thomas Kuhn argued in
his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", normal processes of
evolutionary change in our understanding of the world (or technology)
proceed relatively smoothly. I would argue, basically because we are only
thinking about changing one thing at a time.
For example I don't think anyone would get terribly excited about whether a
pencil, a ballpoint pen or even a goose quill is the appropriate tool to use
for writing.
On the other hand, the tools we are using today involve very fundamental
aspects of cognition that we don't normally think about and that
simultaneously affect many different aspects of the way we work. Because
changes here affect our livelihoods, and possibly even our abilities to feed
our families if we don't deal effectively with them in a timely manner. This
is scarey stuff if we don't understand that we need to be conscious of and
possibly even to change things we haven't thought about in years.
A case in point is the "real value" thread between Andrew Plato and myself
on the value of structured authoring and content management in a technical
writing environment (Check the archives for late 1999 or 2000).
Andrew jumped in on the op-ed side as he was wont to do and attacked a lot
of my claims. More people jumped in on both sides, and the war got so out of
hand that Eric banned at least one of the worst offenders - and I believe
that there was even a threatened court action off line.
The issue behind this holy war and many of the others (e.g., over fonts,
processes, information mapping, etc...), is that these debates involve
differences in document paradigms (if you aren't sure what the term means,
search Google for [paradigm "thomas kuhn"]. Where techwriting is concerned
we are faced with several competing paradigms, e.g., paper vs structured
documents, data management vs knowledge management, learning vs teaching,
etc..
As Kuhn argued, and as I believe we prove almost daily in Techwrl, when we
are arguing about fundamental aspects of our trade we don't easily
articulate, it is all too easy to attack the person we disagree with rather
than to try to understand what it is they have said and debate that. I call
these technology debates turned personal "application holy wars".
Many of us understand the concepts of cultural paradigms when we are dealing
with localisation issues, but few seem to realise that it affects each of us
personally when we are dealing with fundamental technological changes.
On a related subject, I'm still looking for people to read and especially to
give me some feedback on drafts of a Web book and an "academic" paper on the
nature of knowledge and the roles of technological and cognitive revolutions
in the way human knowledge is captured and grows. The book title is
"Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation: A Fugue on the Theory of
Knowledge". I'm happy to send out copies in hopes that someone on the list
will actually be kind enough to tell me if the writing actually works. I've
already sent out some copies to people on the list, but haven't gotten any
feedback yet.
However, to put this discussion in perspective, my wife says I shouldn't
call this phenomenon a holy war, because it might be mistaken for the real
thing.
She is a student of comparative religion with a joint degree in politics and
the history and philosophy of science, and often contributes to About.Com's
religion and philosophy forums. Because she is a fount of historical
knowledge and sweet reason, she continually draws the fire of various kinds
of fundamentalists, and aside from vitriolic e-mail attacks that make
anything on this site as bland as cold mush, she has been subjected to a
constant barrage of virus and trojan horse attacks - up to several a day. If
it wasn't for the fact that we live in Australia and most of the attacks
appear to be from the US, I would worry about her physical safety. I share
the same ISP and phone line and spend almost as much time at home on a
computer as she does, but the last virus I came close was when one got loose
or our corporate intranet at work.
Bill Hall
---------------------------------------------------
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
---------------------------------------------------
TS Eliot - The Rock
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