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Re: Economist magazine points to decline of tech writing
Subject:Re: Economist magazine points to decline of tech writing From:Dave C <davec2468 -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:Tech Writing <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 2 Jan 2015 20:13:14 -0800
Sensationalist journalism. After all, what’s the raison d’etre of journalism if not to get attention? And here we are, talking about it.
Dave
-=-=-=-
> Garbage in, garbage out.
>
> The chart in the Economist article is taken from and cites this paper:
>
>http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
>
> Its authors used an algorithm to guess which of 702 job
> classifications are likely to be computerized. I think there's a flaw
> in their algorithm and/or the source data ("literature on the task
> content of employment" etc.), since tech writing consists of pretty
> much the opposite of "tasks following well-defined procedures that can
> easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms."
>
> On Thu, Jan 1, 2015 at 6:11 PM, Lois Patterson <loisrpatterson -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>> http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21594264-previous-technological-innovation-has-always-delivered-more-long-run-employment-not-less?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/
>>
>> Scroll down the page and you will see a chart about the probability that
>> computerization will lead to job losses in the next two decades for
>> specific professions, including accounting, telemarketing, retail sales,
>> and technical writing. For telemarketing, this probability is 99%, and for
>> technical writing, 89%. I'm sure this doesn't say anything we don't already
>> know. The main question will be if new jobs open up that use traditional
>> tech writing skills. I appreciated that the Economist including technical
>> writing in its list, although I should point out that no specific
>> definition is given, so I can't be sure it fits the definition that "we"
>> have for the profession.
>>
>> This coincides with a podcast on Tom Johnson's site which discusses
>> employment for technical writers, which basically suggests that outside of
>> programming documentation, and documentation for governmental agencies, the
>> outlook is rather bleak:
>>
>> http://idratherbewriting.com/2014/12/17/getting-a-job-in-api-documentation-podcast-with-andrew-davis/
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