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RE: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age?
Subject:RE: Have We Entered a Post-Literate Technological Age? From:<Brian -dot- Henderson -at- mitchell1 -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:16:03 -0700
I just ran across this article about John Haynes, the publisher of the
Haynes car repair manuals. The article had this to say about why people
don't fix stuff anymore:
"...Haynes does not produce manuals for all the menagerie of modern
gadgets that now surround us.
Neither have device manufacturers chosen to fill the void and produce a
range of simple "how-to"s for taking apart everyday gadgets.
The reasons for this are perhaps two-fold.
The first is that society has become less curious in how machines work -
they are no longer a novelty.
We are surrounded by complicated machines and if we had to understand
how each worked and how each could be repaired it would take up much of
our leisure time.
Secondly, the economic reward for looking after things is growing
smaller.
Increasingly the manufacturers of machines do not design them to be
repaired, and so it is often cheaper and easier to throw the mobile
phone, fridge or toaster away rather than repair it."
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/
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