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

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I have my doubts about this one.  I think control enhancements will still keep 
most of the maintenance and repair operations out of the hands of end users, and 
the "future enhanced" spinning wheel will do more but require no more user skill 
than the old models peoples' grandmothers used to teach them to use.  If 
equipment becomes more design-for-service oriented and moves away from 
disposability, the maintenance and repair manuals will still be there, but as 
long as the "back to basics" trend doesn't go all the way back to people having 
their stuff made locally by village smithies, the people doing the related work 
will be providers of repair services.  There will always be some people techy 
and ambitious enough to want the Sams Photofact book, but most will bring their 
stuff to the repair shop or call the traveling fixers the way they used to back 
in the days of tube radios and TVs and cars with distributor caps and 
carburetors.

The transition of tech writers' jobs *back* to being more interesting and more 
down-to-earth, but requiring more knowledge of what goes on under the hood.has 
already been in motion for some time now.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
When your equipment is solid and meant to last, you'll tend to learn a bit about 
how to maintain and fix it, rather than count on throwing it away and replacing 
it because a new one /i/s/ used to be cheaper than a repair.




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