Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age

This article analyzes the location of “value” in technical communication contexts, arguing that current models of technical communication embrace an outdated, self-deprecating, industrial approach subordinating information to concrete technological products. By rethinking technical communication in terms of Reich's “symbolic-analytic work”, technical communicators and educators can move into a post-industrial model of work that prioritizes information and communication, with benefits to both technical communicators and users.     

Sketching a Framework for Graduate Education in Technical Communication

Graduate education in technical communication should provide students with an expansive view of the field. Toward that end, we offer a three-dimensional framework that represents technical communication as a robust, diverse, complex whole. Although the framework aims towards coherence, it embraces contradiction. That is, the framework represents a totality but does not purport to be the only possible representation. Key to the framework is our belief that the gap between theory and practice can actually be productive. Almost all binaries encourage overly simplistic understandings. But we should not allow the goal of remediating the binary to close off the important tensions that can allow the field to advance. This very gap is actually one of the few sites in which new ideas and approaches can be forged.