Re: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?

[John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

Clarke's Third Law applies: Any sufficiently advanced technology is 
indistinguishable from magic.

And to Fred's point, you can't really begin to talk about things clearly 
unless there is some basic understanding of what is happening as well as 
some awareness of the appropriate terminology. Try explaining something 
with only abstract terms and it quickly becomes confusing, and one falls 
back on terms like "thingamajig" and "whoozie". 

Sharon's husband's comments about "internet is broken" was then 
clarified to "email isn't working" and then "wireless connection is 
down" shows an ever-more increasing specificity in both understanding 
and correct terminology. Both are necessary unless you want to remain at 
the level of "it doesn't work" ...

My 2¢,

John Garison

PS - And Al, I know where lumber comes from. My family includes a long 
line of sawmillers, and my first job over college break was hauling 
lumber off a green chain. I eventually graduated to calculating the 
board-feet in a log and driving a forklift. Any time you want to help me 
rebuild some steps, let me know. Beers are on me.



Fred Ridder said the following on 8/19/2009 3:27 PM:
> But the posting from Daniel Ng that both you and Gene are responding to wasn't talking about people not knowing how things work. What he talked about was about how people "find it hard to talk or describe how they use" technology. He wasn't talking about people not knowing how a watch works; if he had been talking about watches, he would heve been talking about people not knowing how to describe how to keep a watch wound (but not overwound) or how to set the correct time. He wasn't talking about people not knowing how a car works; if he had been talking about cars, he would have been talking about an inability to describe things like operating the climate control or unlatching the hood. 
>   
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat