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Mark Baker makes an excellent point about learning to think.
My comment relates to this skill and to some other skills described in this
thread and in the Baseline Skillset thread.
Being able to think, to learn quickly, to work collaboratively and several
other such skills are going to be required for success in any field, not
just technical communication. So, although they are needed by technical
communicators, these skills do not help to define or describe technical
communicators as a subset of the population.
Also, Mark wrote:
>> If you want to learn to think, take a degree in history or economics or
theology. <<
I think it interesting that the fields which came to mind quickly did not
include English or computer science (from which many of us hail), the hard
sciences (physics, chemistry, math, etc.) or the engineering disciplines.
I doubt the list was meant to be exhaustive, but it certainly gives me
something to think about.
