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> <<Or have I missed a whole rich field of study while being a
> journeyman...
> er... trade/craftsman all these years?>>
>
> Depends. Can you tell me about the good and bad aspects of social
> construction and their implications for our work? Can you explain the
> cognitive psychology of vision and information processing, and their
> influence on page (printed or onscreen) design? If not,
> you've missed at
> least two major fields of rich and fascinating study. Do they
> affect your
> job performance? Not necessarily. But then, you won't know
> that until you've
> dipped your toes in those waters, will you?
But, that's the kind of stuff I occasionally read for casual
interest, just as I read Feynman's or Hawking's populist
books for edification in rather different fields. It's also the
kind of stuff that I forget soon after, except for a "highlights"
sorta recognition memory. The detail evaporates very quickly.
In that respect, almost *anything* can be of underlying benefit
to one's tech-writer performance if it keeps your horizons
expanded and your curiosity working.
