OT RE: Tech Writing Curriculum

["Sean O'Donoghue-Hayes (EPA)" <Sean.O'Donoghue-Hayes -at- ericsson -dot- com -dot- au>]

Hmmm some interesting threads in this discussion:

Walden Miller's observation's for example, on the size of the IOWA State
University Technical Writing Department: Iowa State University, there were
28 full-time tech writing professors
and the department was growing"....and the observation that the field of
technical writing is very old - anyone know of any REAL old examples of
technical writing that have survived to the current day that might be of
interest (perhaps how to weave from Medieval France?).

It is also interesting that in places where there was not a record kept of
the achievements of various innovative folk in the form of technical writing
many of those skills are lost forever (for example, I believe, in
re-building Viking longships the academics who attempted that feat had to
start from scratch as there was no longer any existing knowledge, and how
you build stone walls - using only stones/rocks and nothing else - is a
great tradition in many cultures with a rural background....yet the
knowledge is being lost......hmmmm which brings us to the
pyramids....someone should have really documented how they were put up - but
I guess Erich Von Daniken would have been out of a job...).

And then bryan westbrook mentioned "I'll show you a glorified secretary".

What is a glorified secretary - for a bunch of relatively literate people
who are working in a field where we try to avoid generalisations we seem to
really have it in for secretaries and personal assistants and administrative
staff........so is a glorified secretary a secretary who sits upon an
elephant, dressed in silks and furs, hair in a high bun that is interlaced
with sparkling rubies and other gems from the orient - be they male or
female, do they strike a great gong, before uttering each word? Is this a
glorified secretary?  


regards and thanks, 
Sean O'Donoghue-Hayes


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