Re: Non-technical, Technical Writers

["Huber, Mike" <mrhuber -at- SOFTWARE -dot- ROCKWELL -dot- COM>]

Exactly! The technical knowledge you get in school will be obsolete
soon, probably before you get a chance to use it on the job. The "how to
think" knowledge may seem less relevant, but it's applicable to
petroglyphs, help files, and neural implant modules.

But I shouldn't be saying this, because I'm one of those technical types
that plays with computers (in bizarre artificial intelligence languages
like Prolog) after work ...

---
Office:mike -dot- huber -at- software -dot- rockwell -dot- com
Home:nax -at- execpc -dot- com


>-----Original Message-----
>From:  Hutchings, Christa [SMTP:cwhutchings -at- HOMEWIRELESS -dot- COM]
>Sent:  Wednesday, May 06, 1998 8:57 AM
>To:    TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>Subject:       Re: Non-technical, Technical Writers
>
>Candace Bamber wrote:
>
>> The thing that worries me about our profession isn't the prevalence of
>> the     "non-technical" - it's that our education systems are still
>> focusing on     knowledge as an end in itself, in a time when
>> knowledge changes all the   time. I would like to see a move to using
>> knowledge (information) as a     means of teaching the discipline/art
>> of Thought instead.
>>
>Isn't this what a liberal arts degree is supposed to do? In fact, I have
>often told folks that the reason I majored in English was "because it
>taught me how to think." I can pick up a lot of technical know-how on
>the job, but if I didn't know how to think, I wouldn't know what
>questions to ask, or when to ask them!
>