test post for 3060

Hilary Anne WardEnglish 3060: Advanced Tech Writing
Assignment 1: “Infuriating by design” narrative
Description and Criteria

Text: Norman [distributed in-class on Sept. 13]
Genre: Narrative
Required length: 3-4 pages

Write a narrative (i.e. story) about the “infuriating” design problems associated with the technology adopted by your team. These design problems will help to provide a focus for your collection of hacks.

Moving to blogsome!

Ok everyone, move on, nothing to see here! After 3 years @ blogger, bloggerandme has moved to the land of enhanced customizability. Update your bookmarks!

The new URL is stardotstar.blogsome.com

Please pardon the stock images while I figure out how to customize. Also, I haven't found the blogsome login page yet so there may be a slight delay before I am able to post.....

Going up the wide open sidewalk Hilary thought about how many times she had defeated the building and how many times the building had won. Champion swivel doors: 1, Hilary: 0. Even the bacteria on the brass on the doors had won. The security guard wasn't sure that he could let Hilary in.

In a dream that morning she had trudged up the square square stairs and fell asleep on the edge [name deleted]'s fictional bed. Now any time [name deleted] talked there was a halo effect of the mint comforter cover to deal with. Hilary glared bravely at her reflection in the elevator doors, not knowing who might be standing there when the doors opened.

word of the day

In a Sentence: Adroit is one of those combo pak vocabulary words because you get both adroit and maladroit out of one root word.

Vocabulary Word: Combo pak

Sometimes I Worry

Sometimes when [name deleted] is the last person I spoke to before going to sleep and is the first person I'm going to see now that I'm up, I worry that [name deleted] and I might be spending too much time together.

At least it doesn't seem to me like we are, or ever do, but I think that there might be applicable social rule. Now you don't see me rushing to look up that rule.

Let's Just Say

Let's just say that there appear to be no unwanted toppings on the pizza, although I seem be allergic to condiments.

automagically

I'm feeling better this morning due to the magic of drano. Last night my bathtub water was at tsunami level, staying in place on surface tension alone. Now surface of the tub is gleaming with a coat of mild skin irritants.

...

Wouldn't it be hilarious if I renamed this blog "the petri dish?".

Because I hate it when people get all Dr. Phil about not letting their problems define them. I mean, the spirit of not letting problems define you is right on point, but I just don't want to be the thousanth person to go:

I'm not letting this setback define me!

You know, like I think I'm saying something new and snappy? And then my friends would go:

Yeah, be strong.

No matter what happens, I do not have to talk like Dr. Phil. It's boring.

Example of a faulty mental model (Norman):

But what if we get bored while the salad is in the oven? Hilary inquired.

not to my recollection.

However, I do recall heeding the natural sorting of the leaves into random piles at the abandoned Ford-McGraw plant: phusimorphism?

...

And when the doorbell tolled I realized that I am naked. At first I was trapped in a clean bathroom and then I got scared, and then bored. Now I am trapped in a dirty bathroom making a Faux Hawk in the bubble bath.

10:31:

Ashen-hungry faces following you through State Hall like the crescent moon.

the hard sell

Current status: Trying to get fjr to go in with me on a pair of lizards, which we would house on 10 to help control the outlaw cockroach population. It's part of my 3-step plan to suck up to Margaret.

grace

Dear Thor, thank you for the shirtless man who cooks for me.

oh crap crap crap crap crap

Look who has been conjured by my bad mood.

Matlock ain nothin to f^&*;> with

Basically, I would describe my personality as the Wu Tang clan meets Matlock.

Wo-HOO!

No fines
No tickets
No points
No court date

Your final grade in ENG 3060:

"It is not born,
it does not die
having been,
it will never not be;
unborn, enduring,
constant, and primordial,
it is not killed
when the body is killed" (bhagavad gita 2.20).

how to sort messages from everyone-so-far as spam:

Step 1: Click this is spam in the message header.

Step 2: Check spam options:

block messages from this sender
move message to junk folder
report spam to administrator

Step 3: Click purge deleted items to clear spam folder.

hmmm

I wonder what would happen if Grendel got in a fight with some dementors.

some girls

Did you know that some girls view their friends as boring placeholders to pass the time before they get a boyfriend? And he's always a mook, but she adores him, and she wears this revolting yellow ribbon in her hair that bounces as she carries out a festive snack tray while he and his buddies play poker.

Nothing makes me quite so sick as watching an All-American ponytail girl babying her mooky boyfriend.

...

Ow, my bronchioles.

coming down from all the excitement,

Hilary has 2 &*##%^& papers to evaluate.

guest speaker

Hilary reclined on the ledge of 213 STAT as women in hijab walked in , startled, and backed away slowly.

it

it's non-skid to prevent your premature death.
It's Pink Duchess Oil Sheen!
it's #2/30
it's leather but it has some give to it
it's hard to listen to you eat your doughnut
it's like smuggling a giant moose into the English dept.

I love sentences that end in "no reason".

Example: Do you think that Ruth will let me borrow her trench coat tomorrow 6-9 for "no reason"?

everything is illuminated: the autism epidemic

Last night I calmly asked Google, so why are all these autism-related tv programs airing on ABC?

Answer: April is National Autism Awareness Month, a festive season whereby nonautistic people and other nonexperts discuss autism on network television.

So I've been going home immediately after work to catch up on the scoop. Here's a sample of what I learned about autism from Oprah and The View:

1. With genetic counseling, doctors will eventually attain 100 percent prevention of autism. That's right! 50 years from now, my birth could have been prevented.

2. Autism is characterized by having adorable big brown eyes, but pacing and pulling on your hair to utter devastation of remaining family. Those parents are goddamn heros for still loving their kids.

3. It is unknown (and uninteresting) whether autistic individuals may survive to age 21. There are no autistic adults.

4. Mainstream kids may be frightened of the autistic kids in their classroom and may need to do special workbook exercises to cope with the presence of these ... monsters. Oh the humanity!

Rosie's autism couch talk on The View (6.4.2007) culminates in a slightly-less-offensive interview w/ TG:

Rosie: So is there a gene that doctors can -- treat -- with gene therapy?

TG: Look. If there were no autism -- gene -- , then there would be no cameras and technical equipment to film this program. Those genes play a tremendous role in advancing in technology and the sciences --

Rosie: --- blah blah blah.

So this got me thinking: Many of my people are highly influential engineers of networks, CGI, cameras and ... the epistemological framework of genetic science.

So why are we allowing crap like this to air?

acts fast!

> Do you want to borrow my fast-acting soporofic sleep sheep?

1s and 0s

"Unfortunately" Hilary explained, deftly spearing her favorite parts of the salad, "there are only two available positions:

1) completely innocent

and

2) dirty culpable ho.

".

more tantalizing updates

This morning I absent-mindedly scribbled the media cart access code [DO NOT CIRCULATE!!!!] on my jeans while listening to Lauryn Hill, "Ghetto superstar" on a Sony walkman. It was mainly a publicity stunt to broaden the reader base of bloggerandme.

flight of birds

Hilary palmed the cat-gray wall , felt tip marker in one hand, canadian money in the other.

the magic of student work groups

It's 2:32 pm and I'm free to leave. Is this for real? Hold me, I'm scared. I hear Myrtle. There must be some kind of a catch.

ahem:

Someone owes me king size chocolate.

Hilary nestled un-self-consciously into the purple silk, feeling a mix of affection and searing physical pain.

grr

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

cerebrovascular accident

I think that I may have sustained permanent brain damage during the bus ride through PA. But how can this be? Now, if my brain really were damaged, how come my newfound illiteracy is miraculously cured by Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix?

Spoiler: Ron Weasley attacked by giant brain in Book V.

Bits of doughnut and stolen chocolate:

Breakfast of champions.

meanwhile on 10 ,

EB produced her office key and glanced warily in my direction.

"Hi Ellen -- Dr. Ellen -- hey!" I waved.

"Wrong side of the desk, Ward" Ellen muttered.

home

"Hello", said Hilary. The building wheezed.

Sno Balls:

snack of champions.

reading notes

Notes from Gurak and Lay
Southard and Allen, "Identifying audiences for tech comm research".

These guys look at DF's "Research as Rhetoric", asking the interesting question "Who is the end-user of research-generated knowledge?"

DF proposes 5 audiences: participants, gatekeepers, disc. colleagues, nonnative practioners, "our bosses". S&A complicate these categories:

disc. colleagues: in tech comm, research isn't the only "ticket" into disc. conversations. The tech people are surprisingly egalitarian.
gatekeepers: DF has them just valuing "uniqueness", but S&A want the results to serve authentic research audiences.

nonnative (ie nonacademic tech comm people) : don't reduce reseaerch to "practical uses", don't leave them to interpret -- clarify applications and misapplications. A call for "usefulness" doesn't have to be anti-theoretical or positivistic. Just guide readers toward potential applications.

"our bosses" isn't just academic bosses.

This was a good article. It was interesting. I liked it. I'm going for a walk now.

Grice, "evaluating the complete user experience: dimensions of usability".

G goes beyond the traditional (for us. research) is it accurate? is it complete? Is it clear? to suggest 5 dimensions of user experience:
task dimension
motivation dimension
product dimension
cognitive dimension
interactivity dimesnion
comfort dimesnion

G wants to address these new dimensions through research and designs research quetions to get answers (mostly interview/survey). Theory: This relates to my project because these dimensions are addressed in hacks to a greater extent than in proprietary doc.

Blyler and Thrall's article on cultural studies: cameo analysis of the Sony walkman as a "high-tech" device. The fact that this analysis makes me laugh illustrates another impt. principle of cult. studies research: it's historically contingent. What does the walkman mean now?

Gurak and Silker, research on the WWW is similar to and different from researh in print and irl.

n + 1

And then something happened that was like a parody of the kind of thing that would annoy Hilary to the nth degree. Much to her surprise, the thing made Hilary laugh and the feeling of being annoyed melted away.

A remarkably high page rank in google [See figure A]:

[Figure A]

cilantro

soup w/

pita.

ATTW 2007 Ross Pudaloff Richard Grusin laundry detergent Session A5

Thanks to the WSU English Department's overwhelming generosity, we had the fortune of being able to travel via luxury charter bus to ATTW / CCCC 2007 in New York City. Fortunately, thanks to Grayhound, we were not unnecessarily burdened by our luggage during our stay.

4 hours prior to Session A5, we arrived at 4 am in our lavish hotel room with spacious communial showers and authentic arctic water piped directly from the Alps (cross-ventilated by a permanently open bathroom window). Laundry detergent was conveniently located in a store 5 blocks South of the hotel; this early morning stroll afforded us a rare glimpse of Manhattan nightlife. Even without a map, we were able to navigate through the unlit streets via strategically located piles of garbage ("remember, our hotel is south of the mattress and 1 block west of the dirty needles").

After we emerged from the piles of garbage and theorized our hotel shower [it's an "or" gate with zero potential for practical application], we discovered that NY has implemented a brilliant new fitness plan specifically designed for tourists. After a vigorous workout on the Nordic Track, ie 6th avenue, we arrived at the Hilton for Session A5.

The ease and comfort of our travel hoodies, combined with our total lack of data, really took the pressure off of our panel. For example Hilary presented her abstract ("my slideshow is at a rest stop"), sans data, and quietly exempted herself from paying the registration fee. While the CCCers pretended not to notice our distinctive style, their bemused expressions belied the fact that we were mistaken for characters on the Simpsons: in that sense, we were treated like celebrities. Francie loved our conference room so much that she designated it as a satellite of her 12th floor WSU office and permanent new home for her iMac.

Thanks to ATTW 2007 Ross Pudaloff Richard Grusin Laundry Detergent Session A5, our travel log enjoys a remarkably high page rank in Google. Thanks for the line on the CV.

Sincerely,

Hilary Anne Ward

5 am

no clothes
no toiletries
no laptop or jump drive
no presentation files of any kind
no phone [dead -- charger in luggage]

What actually happened:

"We're here!" I said to Jessica at 3:40 a.m.

"Yay!" Said Jessica with tired enthusiasm.

And then we proceeded to the baggage claim area (scary music).

Crap!

If I told you that all the minor complications were just leading up to what actually happened in NY, would you beleive me?

DONE!

Being done is boring.

DONE!

Being done is boring.

GOD DAMN IT!

Then I said now, I bet you've heard this same story millions of times and they were like "As a matter of fact, no".

pita meditation

What is it about being a workaholic that makes one inherently dislike other workaholics? There are like 3 other people who regularly burn the midnight oil around here and every time I see them I think, creeps.

update

The conference fairy did NOT write my paper last night.

The lab fairy did NOT clean up my mess last night.

The desktop fairy did NOT put my documents in a damn folder.

In fact, it's almost as though I never left to sleep for 12 hrs. Scary.

update

Slides completed : 33 [but disorganized w/ lots of gaps].

Know what's unnecessarily upsetting? I think I'm going to be here all night.

blah blah blah blah blah.

drunk.

Done: Slides 17-24.

Slide 16: [SKIPPED] St. Johns list screenshots.

To do: Slide 17: The ai ghetto.

GAAARG

Hilary chose a desolate terminal in the back of the PK library and closed out her webmail. "Good, she said. Now I can finally work on my conference paper".

Hilary opened up a blank document but then remembered to send a quick text message about postponing dinner.

The phone in the adjacent terminal beeped immediately. Hilary quietly stretched up to peer over the cubicle wall and a corresponding pair of tigery eyes peered back.

"Silence your phone!" Hilary said brightly. "Can't you see I'm trying to work?"

"Then maybe you should stop "texting" me", the girl retorted.

"Yeah? Maybe you should stop emphasizing "text" with scare quotes", said Hilary, returning to her document.

Three minutes later a black-and-white-picture of an orchestra playing vaccuums and floor waxers fluttered over the cubicle wall. But Hilary's cursor had not moved.

Hold on, I could be neo-pagan:

Your Results:


The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our message boards.

1. Hinduism (99%)
2. Neo-Pagan (97%)
3. Jainism (97%)
4. Sikhism (92%)
5. Mahayana Buddhism (91%)
6. New Age (83%)
7. Bahá'í Faith (79%)
8. Unitarian Universalism (75%)
9. Orthodox Judaism (73%)
10. Liberal Quakers (70%)
11. Reform Judaism (67%)
12. Theravada Buddhism (61%)
13. Islam (60%)
14. Orthodox Quaker (54%)
15. New Thought (50%)
16. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (46%)
17. Scientology (44%)
18. Secular Humanism (42%)
19. Taoism (42%)
20. Seventh Day Adventist (34%)
21. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (33%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (31%)
23. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (29%)
24. Nontheist (26%)
25. Jehovah's Witness (26%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (26%)
27. Roman Catholic (26%)

barefoot

on slide 16 [of 25] and going home.

Slide-By-Slide ATTW Countown

I pledge not to leave this chair until the ATTW slideshow is finished, with the exception of the clips from Jackass 2. I will updates as each slide is finished (total: 25).

Finished: Slides 1-8 [the Dilbert Google Health Plan clip]. To do: Slide 9, the title page.

Slide 9 is kind of a construction site and has been backlogged.

Slide 10: "Professionals" is done. To do, slide 11: "Quacks".

Slide 11: "quacks" is done. To do: Slide 12, "Jackass".

the stomachache:

Now in beta.

....

Sure! Just one minor detail: Can you drive a stick shift, Hilary?

Oh, absolutely!

Good. Reassure me by explaining how.

We-ell, you just put the key in the ignition and ... pull ... the old ... switcheroo.

Right. Describe the "switcheroo".

"ri-ight",

said Hilary, closing out her webmail. "The message is clear: obviously, for some reason, God does not want me to write this conference paper".

Then her phone mooed, a distinctive noise created by Jessica and Francie's combined ringtones. But Hilary knew better. If I answer that, my travel plans will be altered in noncompossible ways., she muttered, fumbling for the Call Block function.

"Sorry", she whispered, pressing OK: "It's only for a few days until after CCCC".

Hilary stretched in 2 directions like a gumby doll, the lower part of her frame sinking waaay down into the drivers' seat while her neck craned up to the rearview mirror.

"Nice save, Ward", she muttered to herself: "He'll think that the Sunfire is a ghost car or something".

Hilary clenched her teeth in the daydream. "Again: I am yours", she said, "now kindly guide me".

"OK. I didn't want to get all up in your space", replied the duck.

life, the universe and everything

My resolution not to be afraid seems to posess almost mystical powers. It's as though as soon as I said "yes", the whole world sprang to life.

A mere fraction of me wishes to be enclosed among the low ceilings of Hubbard Farms like an anchoress. Note: My favorite thing about that film is the flapping bird that marks the transitions from scene to scene. So another part of me wants to pounce on the bird. But what I really need to pounce on here is my conference paper.

travel

Our plane tickets fell through so we're taking a greyhound bus a la Spike Lee's Get On The Bus, as though that movie did not suck the first time. On the bright side, I've changed my name tag to "Hilary X".

My biggest fear: Suriving for 13 hrs on granola bars and carrot sticks.

so far,

The best thing about my ATTW slideshow is the clip from Jackass 2.

...

Way to keep things in check, Ward. Waay to keep things in check.

countdown:

Book 1: Mirel and Spilka, "Reshaping tech comm: New directions for the 21st century".

The almost Ramist split between content management and information architecture fragments the practice of tech comm.

The focus is on "nontraditional" ideas for moving forward, w/ an academic - industry balance in contributions. Most contributors have done both academic and industrial research.

Part 1: Revising industry and academia / cultures and relationships

Chapter 1 (Dicks) : an interesting comp / contrast of academic and industrial culture, incl. language, power structure and perceptions of time.

Chapter 2 (Bosley) "Jumping off the ivory tower: changing the academic perspective": Shocking claim, academics set up the barriers to academic-industry partnerships by focusing on differences, exclusion, and underestimaging the value of their own work for practitioners. Article focuses on cultural similarities and common ground. Makes the radical suggestion that the university is a normal organization that needs tech comm.

Chapter 3 (Blakeslee) Researching a common ground: Exploring the space where academic and workplace cultures meet. Focuses on underestimated overlapping spaces and boundary work.

Chapter 4 (Pare) Keeping Writing in its Place -- a participatory action approach to workplace comm. Focuses on strategies for overcoming cultural differences. Interested in bidirectional failures to influence. Extreme embeddedness of nonacademic writing, which it's hard for classroom to simulate. The inuit social worker thing.

Chapter 5(Bernhardt) Active-practice: Creating Productive Tension between Academia and industry. Academia in industry need a shared sphere of activity (an active-practice).

I'm going home. It's a beautiful night.

Update: HAR! I read 150 pages, but I'm not taking notes.

the travel situation sucks

but at least it sucks for free.

AS DSM IV criteria w/ explanations (for conference paper)

(I) Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:

(A) marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction

Does the person have noticable impairments such as underuse or overuse of body gestures, and/or have trouble looking people in the eyes, and/or have few facial expressions, and/or have an odd posture?

(B) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level

Does the person have a hard time forming friendships/relationships similar to the ones people their age do?

(C) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interest or achievements with other people, (e.g.. by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people

Does the person fail to point out things that might interest the people around them, and/or fail to show interest in things that interest other people, and/or fail to share things that might interest other people?

(D) lack of social or emotional reciprocity

Does the person fail to respond to other peoples emotions or attempts at socializing?

If answer is yes to atleast two of the questions, the person meets the criteria for catagory I.



(II) Restricted repetitive & stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following:

(A) encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus

Does the person have an interest in something(s) which they are obsessed with, in other words, does the person have an obsessive interest in something?

(B) apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals

Is the person inflexable to change in routines or rituals they engage in, which are not technically necessary to engage in to complete a task, and/or prefer sameness, such as the same type of clothing, foods, etc?

(C) stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g. hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements)

Does the person have a habit of doing something like flapping their hands, and/or twisting their hands or any other part of their body, and/or rocking back and forth, and/or anything of that nature?

(D) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects

Does the person have an obsessive interest with a certain part or parts of an object or objects, for example, a spinning part?

If the answer is yes to at least one of the above questions, then the person meets the criteria for catagory II.

(III) The disturbance causes clinically significant impairments in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

The criteria the person met is valid if the behaviors met in the criteria causes great impairments in the persons social interaction, job, or other social or living skills.

(IV) There is no clinically significant general delay in language (E.G. single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years)

The criteria the person met is valid if the person had no delay in speech development (if the person did have speech delays, the criteria for High Functioning Autism might be met)(V)

There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self help skills, adaptive behavior (other than in social interaction) and curiosity about the environment in childhood.

The criteria the person met is valid if the person did not have a noticable delay in cognative thinking, for example, could answer "yes/no" questions at the appropriate age level, if they could feed and dress themselves at the appropriate age level, and if the person showed an interest in the environment around them at the appropriate age level.
(VI) Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia.

The criteria the person met is invalid if they meet all of the criteria for for another disorder in the PDD spectrum, or Schizephrenia.

Hilary lay on the white sofa next to a stagnant cup of ramen. The dirty yellow candle softened: ew, ew, ew. Through closed eyelids Hilary could still see the following:

#1: a cardboard box of papers up in the office

#2: her paycheck at the front desk

#3: "Must he wander forever under the restless gaze of the gods?" Updike.

#4: naked people

The desk slid and coughed up some floppies but Hilary didn't move. Obviously #1 and 2 were going to pose a problem.

and yet:

This still pleases me.

3

First,

Had vivid dream about talking to god in which god is represented as a mallard duck. Why? "You never listen to me anyway" god explains fanning its wings in the candlelight.

Also,

"Both the good and the pleasant present themselves to a man. The calm soul examines them well and discriminates. Yes, he prefers the good to the pleasant; but the fool chooses the pleasant out of greed and avarice" (katha upanishad 1.2).

And finally,

Commemorative note: Bloggerandme has tracked the recurrance of this dream since 2004.

hey, where's my

Cars-themed mini lunchbox? Because my pen drive is in that!

Poll: Travel plans

So the amtrack plan has fallen through. Will F let me borrow her car to travel to ATTW?

1) Yes

2) No

She shouldn't, but I'm guessing yes.

blah blah blah travel. Why can't it be easy?

It's strange what brings me peace. The sound of the gate smacking the house brings me peace. The word "yacky" brings me peace. Clipping out matted hair extensions especially brings me peace. It's not like in the upanishads.

research update

Unless someone else has been working on my ATTW paper, it is not exactly getting done.

Today I slept in until 2 pm and then did the walk of shame in the sunlit gap between the houses. That reminded me of when Ruth brought over the table and the microwave last Spring. I made her walk in the cool stoney gap between the houses where the big gate opens to the apple blossoms. And the moral of the story is that when the gate smacks against the side of the house the turkeys sqawck. It never gets boring.

Roxanne convinced me to hate the experimental hair extensions [tangled + matted --she was right], which I clipped out rather than waiting for the knots to slip.

Then I (gasp!) spent real money on a new custom set -- ie not just what's laying around the salon --which I will then (gasp! gasp! gasp!) spend real money to have professionally put in. To celebrate the travel funding that left me w/ some extra cash for once. And just in time for summer.

Meanwhile my brush and I are in 3-week time out and I'm in a very good mood about that. Also, I hardly ever spend money. So that was nice. It's a good thing that I do not have a credit card.

cilantro

soup

immediately.

secret

I'm skipping out of conference panel prep to take my first walk in Clark Park in the spring. Hopefully fjr's super-arch-enemy does not have the same idea.

I looked away from the bright library and toward Christine, who is a nice soft neutral color. And then she really straightened me out about some stuff.

ACK!

The consequences of consuming fewer than 10 alcoholic beverages per year are: 1 hangover per beverage consumed.

I do remember eating a whole thali by myself. Then we went back to aunt Becky's house, where it looked as though a silkworm had vomited silk over the entire house and Roxanne was stirring a boiling cauldron of silk on the stove.

I also recall sleeping in a pile of dry silk watching a panel of wet silk fade up to blue like an antarctic sunrise. Today my teeth have fuzzy slippers on them.

task list

Done:

Stripped, redyed and recut own hair @ 4am. Came out a gorgeous in a yaky asteroid kind of way, ie sun-kissed brown with choppy homemade layers.

Slept for 12 hrs.

"Asato ma sat blah blah blah".

Read Sade/Fourier/Loyola, the passage about the anti-giraffe.

Became for a second the kind of person who hedges bets against how much she can get away with.

Ps, I am 26: notes

It's my 26th birthday and I'm awake in the lab writing my ATTW slideshow as though I like to work or something.

So here's the run-down: This year was comparatively seamless but punctuated by the following:

#1: The turkeys at the end of my block.

#2: A few brief moments when my stomach did not hurt, once while I was watching Ruth clutch her stomach in the 10th floor lounge (is that what it looks like? Stomachaches are hilarious!).

#3: The line "peace among goats".

Still, there are some things that I hazily remember but that seem to could not not have happened.

Take for example not talking to f: I do vaguely remember what that was like as though it were a dream [Keep in mind that "not talking" comprised a thread of 83 email messages titled "ps -- final note"]. But it sounds made-up.

I also had a brief, semi - passionate friendship with an abd grad student that (at that time) seemed very real to me. And sometimes now, when I am being the demanding high-maintenance yaky princess that I am, I remember that there was a point in time and a why that I sharply raised my expectations for others' conduct. But it seems to me now that I was always like that.

Honestly? It feels as though I have not moved from this chair except to get a twix bar. It's amazing that I'm not obese.

task list

Done:

Made bootleg copy of website replacing images of the Welcome Center with abandoned bldgs on mouseover

Badgered Renuka for description of mysterious stranger / email correspondent. He got to her first.

"""" Mike M

"""" Vicki

"""" Michelle. "He's ... nondescript", she said unhelpfully. "Like he might be a Republican : Clean cut. Like a grown-up. Like these are the shirt and pants he got at Kohls".

Made bootleg copy of website replacing images of the Welcome Center with abandoned bldgs on mouseover

Brushed my teeth and hair

Snooped on fjr's active desktop to discover that Ken has his very own folder. How special!

Added my own folder to FJR's active desktop. Title: Hilary's Superfolder That Is Marked In Its Superiority To Ken's Folder.

"Your folder is empty" teased f.

"Yes, but if you turn it inside out it contains the whole world".

ATTW rehearsal.

"Theory is what separates humans from the squirrels".

Came within an inch of committing a sex act in my office.

Confessed to Francie

Stepped over Ruth on my way to the refrigerator. Wait: why was she laying on the floor of the 10th floor lounge?

"I wish I had a cat laying right here", she said, patting her stomach with a pained expression.

Note to f: "See? I am not the only person who lays down when my stomach hurts".

Talked to Kim

Anyway, Blogger and Me is pleased to announce that the topic of my hair is closed until May.

Seduced by so few words.

summer

It's the middle of the semester, but I'm already neglecting core responsibilities to work on projects such as: an impressionistic slideshow of the maha mrityunjaya.

For example, "triyambakam yajamahe" would be a traffic light. Sugandhim is the steam that rises from manhole covers.

(I think) the pictures would have to be moonlit for contrast and the OneCard machine is bound to make a cameo somewhere ...

travelgate update -- even more funding

Super Bob finds more travel dollars behind the microwave [see below]. Note Bob - Francie correspondence for added cuteness, which becomes cuteness cubed with me and Jessica on the CC line. Too bad these fantasies never work out irl.

Wait, what fantasies?

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ROBERT J BURGOYNE [mailto:ad5148@wayne.edu]
>Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 1:32 PM
>To: ae8683@wayne.edu
>Cc: hilaryanne@wayne.edu, j.rivait@wayne.edu
>Subject: Grad Student support
>
>Dear Frances,
>
>I will approve $100 apiece for the grad students in tech writing who will be
>presenting papers at the conference you describe. Please talk to Kathy to
>find out what the procedure will be. The larger question should be taken
up
>later.
>
>Best, Bob

So Roxanne and I are talking to each other again, and I see this as a positive development for several reasons. For example, the cool cool interesting smartness exemplified by Roxanne. And plus she has long hair, so she might be able to help with the problem with my bangs.

usability problem

So here's the thing: What do girls do when they have like Rihanna-style sideswept bangs that sweep over 1 eye, and they need to like use that eye to write a short perl script or something? Should I assume that sexy hair and programming are mutually exclusive?

handprint awareness day

Along with my hair, the following items are now soft ash brown:

1. My hands.

2. My cell phone.

3. The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

4. My ipod nano.

girl scout

Date: Fri 2 Mar 16:15:05 EST 2007
From: HILARY WARD Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: auto mechanic
To: ae8921@wayne.edu


Hi Dr. Gorzesky,

I'm searching for a reference to a reputable auto mechanic in southwest detroit. Any suggestions?

Note: Yes, I'll gladly take a reference to an espanol-only mechanic. The language of cars is universal.

Hilary

p.s. It takes a real grown-up to ask for a mechanic reference well in advance of the next emergency. Time to reward myself by deleting 4 unread student emails.

fabulous idea for TCQ article

"Hall discusses technology as "extensions", which permit the human species to evolve without changing biologically" (Miller, Technology as a form of Consciousness, p. 229).

Do you see it? Do you?

How long will this hair last?

I'm happy to report that the cute extensions and cut have already outlasted their predecessors.

However, this color has 2 hrs. to live. Max.

Every time I shower, precious blue-green tones go crestfallen into the water. Througout the history of bloggerandme, the remaining color has had many names such as:

tentanus shot
dennis rodman
vomited yam

Don't they know that tones with names like:

dark chocolate brown
seaweed
midnight mud
ash

are self-evidently better? It never ceases to amaze me that people will add golden tones to their hair on purpose, and that some even look good while doing it.

Everything is 5 Dollars:

Now including tires.

simile

The elevator slid like water off a duck's back.

Quiz

Bloggerandme invites you to participate in a new quiz titled, "How long will this hair last?".

Helpful hints:

1. I have to look at a picture of Rihanna to style my hair.

2. "Let's pretend, for a second", said Hilary, "that I'm motivated enough to do this at home. What ... contraption would I use?" Answer: ceramic flat iron.

3. This morning I looked at my hair in the mirror and out at my car where the ceramic flat iron is now housed and said, "Shh! Not now".

4. Hair invites unwanted sexual attention.

5. I've started to bitch that my hair (which is a natural chocolate brown) "looks red to me for some reason".

So, how long will this hair last? The closest guess (measured in days) wins a free lunch @ OG.

update

Bloggerandme is happy to announce that I survived the gravy of death and am up on 9, "happily" grading papers.

...

So one thing that's hard to find on-campus is, a socially acceptable place to lay down.

Let me back up. I'm mildly allergic to gluten. Basically, it wears down the tread on my stomach lining. Normally this is not a big problem: I "try to stay away from" products that contain wheat, but to get really, genuinely sick I'd have to drink gluten concentrate or something.

So do you remember the hot turkey sandwitches that my dad used to make when we lived in Adrian? Of course not. But the point is, that's one hell of a sandwitch. So tonight I describe the sandwitch at OG and they make one for me and I ate the sandwitch.

And the preternaturally thick gravy must have been made straight from gluten concentrate or something. So two minutes later, I'm locked in that semi-private bathroom throwing up things that I ate in kindergarten. Normal people who just want to go to the bathroom are knocking on the door.

SO-O I leave without paying and go to State Hall looking for a place to crash. It feels like I've been kicked in the stomach. I'm dizzy. I should phone a friend to take me home, but first I want some privacy with my exploding stomach.

So I get to State Hall and the bathroom floors are all pee-soaked, which makes me throw up again. Hmm, I think. Better go upstairs.

Then I kind of lay down flat on the stairwell. I know from my experience with Avalon cookies that I'm not going to die ("whole" = wheat), but the students, who don't know that, are stepping over me on their way to class. No forthcoming offers to help. So I'm laying there kind of praying, please don't let any of these students be my students, please don't let any of these instructors be Ruth.

And the student security guard who has seen me walking to class a ZILLION times asks me to leave. "I'm not homeless", I protest, "Just allergic".

"Still", says the guard skeptically, "you can't lay here. I'm going to have to ask you to leave".

So I go outside and lay on the designated stone slab. It's cold, so I go under my coat. What if I fall asleep here, I wonder. Throwing up makes me tired so I start to drift off.

But then, fortunately, some nice students come by and offer me a quarter.

various

Date: Tue 27 Feb 16:24:10 EST 2007
From: Margaret Maday Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Fwd: FYI -- Various construction issues

travelgate update

Anyway, who says that nagging doesn't work? I, personally, did some champion nagging this weekend, the kind of nagging that veers into stalking.

And what did we get? Travel funding. Oh you will see how far I am willing to go, said Francie to Ross, to make the nagging stop. That's a paraphrase.

reverse psychology

You know, if I ever do have children, I've decided not to try to influence them on matters of faith. Nope. Because I know, for example, that my mom is going to want to take them to Mass [ie Catholic Church]. And that's fine with me. They can go and listen about the Israelites and the Canaanites and the Pamphalet Rack in the Vestibule.

And then, on the way home, I'll say: "Well, I bet you've had enough religion for one day -- so I'm not going to bore you with a story about Hanuman the talking monkey".

New - the Travelgate protest / fundraiser:

Now with angry mob props, handcuffs and "frisking".

story

"A young guy lived in an ordinary town, ordinary except for one thing:it was surrounded by a completely empty plain that extended all the way to the horizon.

One afternoon, the guy went for a walk. It was sunny and there was a soft wind blowing. Some children were playing in the street and some old people were drinking tea in the doorways of their houses. It was a small town, and when he walked too much in one direction, after rounding a corner suddenly he faced the plain, flat and white as marble, extending to the horizon. So the town began to get smaller. Houses and buildings began to disappear. More and more often the guy found the plain, and changed his direction. Also the streets began to get wider, until because of the decreasing number of houses and buildings, and because of the widening of the streets, the plain began to be seen in any direction that one could look. This continued to happen until only twelve buildings remained in the town, then eight, then four...

Finally the town disappeared completely and the guy remained in the middle of the plain, empty all the way to the horizon, with the sun fixed and unmoving in the sky" (Pablo Frank).

While doing some research for a panel on depathologization or something, Hilary was reassured that her people indeed represent the next step in human evolution and will take over the world. In fact, you can now buy a T-shirt about it [t shirt link coming soon].

Big props to Martijn Dekker for outlining the interrelationship of computers and autistic culture. And thanks for the pronounciation guide so that I can give you due credit for your historical research during my presentation -- this was a rare find.

Fabulous "Enjoy your modem" quote for ATTW:

"Autistic cultural development began in the early 1990's when increased computer access allowed established groups to form as never before, in a medium that was very well suited to autistics. It was quickly found that similarities in experience, communication, and interests created a thriving basis for a culture" (Nelson, 2006).

notes toward ATTW presentation

Good term for my presentation : the "broader autism phenotype" (Attwood).

"Pathways to diagnosis" (Attwood cites the Yale study) is an interesting network concept.

Ie, opening line of my talk:
"The Yale study's highly publicized findings pose this question: do we attribute the autism epidemic to better diagnosis or increased prevalence of the broader autism phenotype? However, no research as explored the possibility that autism is transmitted via the Worldwide Web". Har!

It's strange that Attwood doesn't specifically name the WWW as a pathway to diagnosis.

Oooh. And this would be the theoretical frame:
Much of what we know about medical discourse separates medical discourse into two diverging categories: the professionals and the quacks (cite Faber, Koerber and Tebeaux -- use funny diagram of professional w/tie and funny-looking quack, use my hat, which I won't wear to the conference, as the model for the quack). What we lack is a good model for how these 2 discourses intertwine.

HFA as an example par excellence.

Step 1: APA - affiliated message boards and forums, or MB and forums est. by parents of children diagnosed with autism.

Interesting features: References to DSM -IV criteria, medical-model + psychosocial support.

(Note: Dr. Phil has an AS / HFA message board. No shit!)

Step 2: Individuals w/ AS HFA post in "parents asking adults with AS / HFA sections". Medical model + psychosocial support.

Step 3: And then an interesting thing happened: writers w AS / HFA argue for depathologization.

These writers directly critique and parody the medical model.

Step 4: Professionals (Baron-Cohen, Attwood, etc) argue for depathologization of the broader autism phenotype in medical journals, citing the www writing of adults with AS / HFA (folk psychology, folk physics).

Note loop : Diagnosis is step 0 and step .... n.

HEY! I could email Barb Kirby and get notes from the old message board, woot!

good grief

After the grievance committee meeting this morning, I had a chance to seriously think through the connection between two apparently separate ATTW issues:

#1: The power structure of the panel.

#2: Travelgate.

So here's how I figure.

If I'm roughing it on a kind of warped survivalist retreat where we surivive on locusts and honey (read: no per diem meal allowance) and Jessica and I learn valuable life lessons by raising alpacas, that's fine. Bring on the bunk beds. But in this scenario I expect to rough it at the conference too, taking some meaningful intellectual risks and inviting the panel out for some NY nightlife.

But if I'm going to say "anti-discourse" when prompted (as in: "Actually, Hilary, that's not what we mean by anti-discourse") and sit politely through the whole good-girl / bad-girl / babysitter dynamic we have going? Seriously? That will be 20 dollars a song.

brittany

This just in: According to multiple media sources, shaving your head and / or putting someone elses' hair on your head is a sign of incapacitating mental illness.

Finally, the proof I need to quit my job and live perpetually off of SSI.

Every month, a strange thing happens: everyone in the adjacent terminals in our research library makes a HUGE PRODUCTION about sitting down, with heaving sighs, chair leaping (which is a violent form of "scootching") and strange verbal ticks.

Do I really tune all of this out when I'm not getting my period? Seriously ? Am I normally wearing earmuffs? Can I have some earmuffs now?

office meditation

Why am I here?
What is my job?
Where is the stapler?

It's time to be mean to some cilantro soup, because chili cheese fries just aren't salty enough.

"Indeed, it is hard to find a clinical account of autism spectrum conditions that does not involve the child being obsessed by some machine or another. Examples include extreme fascinations with electricity pylons, burglar alarms, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, video players, calculators, computers, trains, planes, and clocks. Sometimes the machine that is the object of the child's obsession is quite simple (e.g., the workings of drain-pipes, or the design of windows, etc.). A systematic survey of obsessions in such children has confirmed such clinical descriptions". Simon Baron-Cohen, arguing for the folk psychology / folk physics model as a way to legitimately depathologize autism.

... And that was before Parm, our receptionist, decided that she had found the "perfect guy" for me. No thanks, I calmly replied with the kind of mythical silent scream that you read about but rarely experience firsthand.

But do you know who I am talking about? She insisted.

No, I said. I honestly can't put a face to the name. And something inside of me curled up like a dead shrimp.

seriously

Don't get me started on the Brittany haircut. Male news anchors with cute buzz cuts are talking about it as though she mutilated herself or something. It kind of makes me throw up in my mouth a little.

evidence

From recent email to f:

>Hey, I have this cool idea for our ATTW presentation! *Now* all I have to do is wait for you to say "No, Hilary, that's not what we're doing" and Jessica to agree.

my period

Is it really Time to Be Mean To People again? Gosh, this month really flew by!

comparative religion

Book of Mark: Leprosy cured by Jesus.
Atharvaveda : Leprosy cured by a dark plant.

math phobia

What is a logarithm? Because I think that I need one just to access the Blackboard Gradebook grading interface.

when I look back

I can honestly say that at least I didn't cram them all together like sardines just to make myself feel like a big shot.

a la post secret

My secret is that I am a huge sucker for the word "yaky".

"So are you going to Winter fest?"

"Pretty cold out there", I said blandly. How dare he disturb my web browsing! Why doesn't his bloodthirsty man-god silence him?

...

It's surreal to run my fingers through my hair, twisting it into tiny bantu knot like hyperlinks back out into into the outside world. Plus I think that boy is looking at me.

reading notes

Notes on Kynell and Moran: 3 keys to the past: The history of technical communication.

The easy questions:

When was it published?
in 1999.

What group of scholars is the author addressing? Reseachers in technical communication.

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing? Historical anthology.

The hard questions:

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

Tech comm researchers were writing our "as-yet-incomplete" history. This anthology collects and contributes to that knowledge.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

Other research on tech comm history focues on curricular shifts, emerging disciplinary patterns and broad movements. KM refocues on key individuals, european and american movements, key advances and reprinted articles. The rivers bibliography goes at the end.

What is the epistemological background?

Historical research that provides insight into current trends and suggests new directions.

What is the argument?
The disparity among the selections suggests that "inquiry into technical communication is virtually boundless" (p. 11) -- a very strong claim if you know what's been going on. KM argue that Tech comm isn't chained to a dsicpline: engineering, science or business. We should not priveledge one discipline over the other and explore sources from "a range of archival environments".
What evidence does the author bring?

What perspective does the author take?
There is no such thing as a "straight" history.

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

KM don't really talk about the "landmark essays" shape, as well as report, the history of the field -- but that's precisely KM are trying to do here.

Chapter notes:

None: I think I've read this book at least 108 times. Copy chapter outline for folder.

Project notes:

Tebeaux is the key essay.

Technical books were common in the 16th and 17th century, incl. techincal books for women. The first ones by women were on domestic medicine. The technical books by women have a "conversational, personal quality" w/ succinct linear instructions.

The books for midwives: women resented the fact that medical professionals were trying to supplant midwives. OK, the midwives might have had to draw on some quackery, but that's only because the physicians were publishing in Greek. So in another document the midwives propose a royally funded teaching hospital for properly educating midwives.

(!) Tebeaux views these documents as "a microcosm of social change" -- you could probably say the same thing about hacks and user-centered design.

science of sleep

Whatever resentment I've been harboring against fjr about ATTW has been completely soothed by her heroic rejection of any travel arrangements that require me to share a bed.

"Hilary doesn't even sleep with the people she's sleeping with", she argued. It was more than Ross wanted to know.

A friendly visit from last semester's students reveals that they waited the whole semester for me to go to the board and outline the principles of effective technical communication.

Maybe it's time for me to have a "This is not a content course" talk w/ 3060.

they

returned, after some strangeness, to a normal state of grace.

so anyway:

As I was saying, I am going to do something very interesting with my hair. Note: interestingness is scheduled for tomorrow at 5:45 pm and Friday 11: 15 am.

The big warning sign that I had eeked every inch out of a relaxed pace of life after the fire came last week, when I started eating cereal with bare hands out of the cereal box in bed.

More omens have started to accumulate.

reading notes

Short meme notes on the Mitcham review in TCQ:

M doesn't take rhetoric seriously
M ignores that "technology" in teckne rhetorike is a verb
M thinks that the neologism is a purely rhetorical move
Mitcham has the handbook tradition in mind when he says "rhetoric" or "communication"
Connection between handbook tradition and technology -- stamped and stored -- connection to Heidegger.
Other scholars such as Miller and sullivan try to get out of the technologizing [ie in the handbook tradition] of rhetoric by turning to phronesis but, the reviewer argues, we could turn to techne w/better results. Weaknesses of praxis: embedded in technological system and you can't get out. Techne: you can teach it as a heuristic process -- a verb -- of "identifying, questioning, perhaps even transcending boundaries".
Atwill : techne can "transgress boundaries" and "rectify transgressions"
Johnson: Techne focues on maker as origin and end use by the user.
Read: Technology as a form of consciousness [CR Miller].

also

The recurring metaphor of the evil cucumber reminds me of Sharon's review of Pan's Labrynth:

"I am now prejudiced against all fauns because they were bad in two movies".

note:

The metaphor of the evil cucumber appears in several, vastly different cultural contexts.

shame

Date: Mon 5 Feb 17:58:49 EST 2007
From: Margaret Maday Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: Fwd: Water Break
To: EVERYONE-SO-FAR@lists.wayne.edu

Worst Case Scenario: Because a window was left open in a 9th floor faculty office, pipes have frozen and burst causing water damage to rooms 9313, 9312 and 9310. The water damage/flooding has moved down to floors below 9. Water has now been shut down throughout the building. We won't know the extent of the damage until tomorrow.

Margaret

text

me (to Neal): Heat rises. Heathen freezes.

hmm.

Date: Mon 5 Feb 12:12:51 EST 2007
From: "Salvo, Michael J" Add To Address Book | This is Spam
Subject: RE: Revised Panel Title AND paper titles
To: "Frances J. Ranney"
Cc: "HILARY WARD" , "Jessica Rivait" ,

Dear Frances, Hilary, Jessica, and Joseph,

Thank you for the update on the panel and individual titles. I’ve added Joseph Jeyaraj to your panel thinking it fit very well with the panel theme and approach. I’ve included Joseph in the CC line of this email, and added his contact information below. Please be in contact with all the panel members, and I will be in touch soon with panel chair information as well.

Joseph Jeyaraj Joseph_Jeyaraj@baylor.edu
Liminality and Postcolonial Bureaucracy: The Right to Information Act - Deprivatizing Postcolonial "File Notings"

I have scheduled the session for A5, the first morning session, and believe you will draw a substantial audience. Thank you, and I am looking forward to seeing you all in New York.

Michael
salvo@purdue.edu

reading notes

Notes on Selber[SS], Computers and Technical Communication.

The easy questions:

When was it published?

In 1997.

LINK: Selfe identifies 1997 as a critical year for something internet related [look this up!].



What group of scholars is the author addressing?
Teachers and administrators in the research discipline of tech comm The focus is on pedagogy : "the possibilities for tech comm in the academy".

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

Critical anthology -- SS wants the book to be a "Burkean parlor".

LINK: SDF on virtual communities.

The hard questions:

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

The most important thing to think about here is the fact that there were other "computers and" conversatiosn going on: Computers and language arts, computers and composition, computers and English studies.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

SB focuses on "the full range of pedagogical and prgrammatic issues specifically facing tech comm teachers and program directors in the digital age".

What is the epistemological background?

A humanistic approach to tech comm (Miller).

What is the argument?

Weak: We need to take a critical, contextualized view of computers and tech comm.

What evidence does the author bring?
1) computer courses in tech comm programs are often skills based
2) Computer courses in tech comm integrate technologies in conservative ways, focusing on efficiency and speed.
3) Computing spaces in academic tech comm don't support the demands of industry
4) Few tech comm programs have systematic strategies for integrating computers.

What perspective does the author take?

Selber's "critical, contextualized view" of computers and technical communication.

What perspective is under-represented or missing?


Selber says he's not focusing on particular "artifacts of an industrial culture": IP, specific platforms, commands and that kind of stuff. This is how Selber winds up making sweeping generalizations about technology and culture -- cf his interpretation of GUI: It's good!

Chapter notes:

Selber, Hypertext spheres of influence. S argues that htext development and use is influenced by a range of pedagogical, institutional and industrial forces. This is precisely the kind of claim that gives Selber his honororary snooze button. I won't sleep with him at ATTW.

Johndan in Wild Technologies: I've read this article many times -- it's the one with primary and secondary instrumentalization. (Secondary inst. recuperates primary inst).

LINK: Secondary instrumentalization and heidegger's turn to art at the end of Essay Concerning Technology.

LINK: Like Selber, Johndan -- NOOOO, STOP, Johndan! -- seems to think that GUI is liberatory : experimental and nonhierarchical.

Wahlstrom's article: An ecological model of literacy, a liminal space where old stuff is fading out but new stuff isn't settled in, the ark of rammed earth as a "transcendent interface" (w/no silver gods), words becoming things (not just the 10 commandments but the tablets), the liminal digital space and a shift back to some of the old rules. Wahlstrom is enthusiastic about the virtual classroom -- contrast with SDF.

Burnett and Clark, "Shaping technologies: Electronic collaborative interaction". The main argument is that our communication is shaped by coll. technologies more than it shapes them. Tries to get beyond a tool metaphor.

Allen and Wikliff: New communication technologies challenge traditional assumptions about learning, work and writing.

NOTE: Why is it that the main theme of every chapter in this book is DUH?

Howard, "Designing computer classrooms for tech comm programs". Interesting: at the time of thsi book, most university labs supported desktop publishing but not interface design. In terms of our lab, I would say that it does support interface design but it is only used for desktop publishing, and that students use a desktop publishing metaphor to do their multimedia assignments.

Emphasis on what to buy, not on finding ways to hack and customize. These people (Computer people in English studies) are eating Plato's cookery off a digital menu.

(!) Interesting: Howard talks about the layout of a computer classroom. He touches on power circuits, air filtration, lighting and static. H comments that lots of people have already talked about the layout of a computer classroom, including the pod vs row arrangement. He has a special meaning for computer classroom: the students use the computers and the teacher can teach in it (not a technology-equipped traditional classroom or decentralized lab).

Words words words: our computer classrooms and labs at WSU appear to have been assembled by sleepwalkers. There should be a grad student design team for the computer lab.

I disagree with Howard: instead, I would give my 3060 students a shoestring budget and let them design the computer classroom as a community-based tech comm project (they have to write memos, proposals, etc). That way, they're forced to take a critical, contextualized approach because they're planning for how people will write with the technology rather than mindlessly writing with the technology.

Wearner and Kaufer: "Guiding tech comm programs through rapid change".

Ecker and Staples: "Collaborative conflict and the future: academic-industrial alliances and adaptations". Support "balanced and unresolved collaboration" with a hint of "get over your fear of industry". Still, ES are alligned with the traditionalprinciples of academic freedom associated with the Boyer report. However, they think tech comm should break away from the "disciplinary definitions of english departments" and be interdisciplinary and technology-related.

...

Hilary let her hand stick to the window, the horses strain against the fence and the plants coil around the light.

om wifi

Victory to wifi. Victory to wifi over and over.

on a side note,

Paper title for ATTW: "Enjoy your modem : WANs, diagnosis and depathologization".

current stats

Number of times I saw Pan's Labyrinth at the theatre yesterday: 2

Interfaith dialogues w/ Sharon: 1

Messages titled "ATTW": sorted into spam folder.

oh :

That's what that mysterious number on my cell phone happened to be. You know, I really should call them back.

bwahaha

>REMINDER:
>
>Before you leave for the weekend, please make sure any opened
>windows are closed and locked before leaving. It will be extremely
>cold this weekend and we don't want any building pipes to freeze and burst.
>
>Thanks for your help.--Margaret

current affirmations

I accept that established researchers in scientific and technical communication will get to the IPCC report before I do. [random smashey noises]

reading notes

Notes on Doheny-Farina [SDF]: "Effective Documentation: What we have learned from research".

Preliminary questions:

How will this book compare with "The Wired Neighborhood" and other, more theoretical books by SDF?

This book is meant to make lots of empirical or otherwise submerged research avail. to a wider audience of people interested in tech comm. Will any of the authors chose a more experimental style in reporting their findings?

Will I be shocked by the coolness of the book?

What would this book suggest about the "life" of the IPCC report on climate change? [released this morning].

The easy questions:

When was it published? 1988

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

SDF is addressing a wide range of tech comm professionals:
tech writers
document designers
tech writing dept managers
tech comm researchers [me]
teachers and students in tech comm

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

It's an anthology of -- and this is important -- prescriptive research. SDF hedges this: some of the research is localized and some attempts to uncover fundamental principles; some is slightly positivistic and some is critical about the generalizability of specific studies. The methods are elcectic and attitudes toward the findings vary, but this is a collection of prescriptive studies.

The hard questions:

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

The book arose out of a conflict between 1) tech comm researchers and 2) pracititioners and teachers at the 34th intl tech comm conference [may 1997]. Group #2 called for more research and group #1 kept saying that the research is out there, but inaccessible. This conflict mirrored a larger conversation in the field.

SDF offers Effective Documentation as a way to fill the gap with research that can reach a wide range of tech comm people. Some of the research is new.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

SDF focuses on issues that are relevant to a wide range of tc professionals: 1) text and computer screen issues, 2) the contexts of usability and 3) research methods and epistemological / critical stuff.

Focus topics: user learning and performance, format and graphic design, management of documentation processes, analysis of research methods in tc.

These topics are of current general interest in TC.

What is the epistemological background?

Huh. What is an epistemological background?

Vee-eery breifly, the form of technical comm today reflects the heritage of 17th-century publishers and audiences. While "Adventurous scribes" conducted layout experiments in the M.Ages, this stuff was standardized in the century after the invention of the printing press: at first, the pp wanted to preserve aesthetic features for the printed book, but then they started to experiment with features that enhance readability.

OK. So, at about the same time, The Royal Society rejected the exceesses what we call "Ciceronean" rhetoric for a plain, ytilitarian style that makes language safe for natural philosophy. [see Sprat, a history of the royal society].

So that's a brief history of making texts useful. We're still interested in how to do that. Note: While reading-to-learn has been popular since the 17th century, reading-to-do became more popular circa WW II. Current views on how to make texts useful vary widely. This book presents current information for a wide audience of tc professionals.

What is the argument?

SDF takes a stasis approach, presenting point and counterpoint on the following issues:

[research into user learning and performance]
elaboration vs truncation
computer documentation : "worked out" or active/experimental
hardcopy-to-online transition in computer d.

[research into format and graphic design]
graphics in hard copy and online: what works?

[research into management and documentation processes]
outmoded documentation cycles vs. new directions

[research methods: relative merits]

What evidence does the author bring?
The articles [copy chapter descriptions]

What perspective does the author take?

SDF reports prescriptive research.

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

I would describe prescriptive research as ... driven or skewed, but I'll have to read chapter by chapter to see what's missing.

Notes:

(!) The ITCC discussion section was lead by WSU's John Beard (WSU School of business).

Fabulous overview of empirical research [Morgan, ch. 2].

(Har!) An expert user in Hunt and Vasilladis' study of error messages preferred 1 error message: ERROR.

HV deviates from the 1st definition of tech comm -- no matter how brilliant the introduction is, the "perverse reader" will open your book in the middle. NOTE: HV prefer "elaborated natural language" for error messages.

Bradford notes that technical books -- the "technology of text"-- have looked the same for 800 years, and that these traditions aren't applicable to the emerging "technology of the display screen".

(!) Krull challenges the assumption that GUI is the new jesus. HE thinks that icons are a transitional thing (they're slippery and inextensible) and that direct manipulation interfaces will focus more on point and do, windows and dynamic menus.

(!) Baker on the traditional context of product documentation: 1) The user is inexperienced. 2) The product is unique. 3) The user is concerned about damaging the product and 4) The user perceives the product as dangerous. Note: Hacks are as far away from this traditional context as possible! Cite this at the QE.

(Hey!) What can this book tell tech comm instructors about syllabus design?

hacking the blogger template

3 points:

#1: "Men are born into whole palaces that they unravel with bare hands". Augustine

#2 No, unraveling my blog is not easier in Blogger beta (ie the new blogger).

There's nothing like a sexy GUI to mislead you with the illusion of control. I swear I could write a conference paper about that wrench and bolt icon.

#3 As a final word, my frustration with the blogger template has nothing to do with the fact that I don't know PHP.

#4 Yes, I'm going on the ignorant fantasy that one template will be easier to take apart than the others (See #3).

backing away slowly

it had to be the last time for awhile and to do what I normally do when I can't stand it. What? Nothing.

reading notes

Notes on Doheny-Farina [SDF], "The Wired Neighborhood".

Hilary's shorthand review: This book should be compressed into a zipped file.

Travel funding (rant)

First of all, I am happy for the students in Literary and Cultural Studies who were able to present at the MLA in December. I agree that your travel should be funded. But so should mine.

Both the English Dept Travel funds and the Humanitites Dept Travel funds are exhausted by conferences in lit and cult studies like the MLA, which are scheduled for earlier in the academic year. The Travel funds are exhausted by the time I am eligible to apply for funding to attend my conference (CCCC), which is scheduled in March.

When graduate students in composition, rhetoric and tech comm present our research at conferences, we travel on our own dime. I refuse to accept that this perennial, systematic slight is a mere accident of the calendar. Rather, the lack of Travel funding for students in nonacademic writing communicates a subtle message about the value of our research and professionalization : We are second-rate.

Disclaimer: I am not claiming that the Department of English should withold Travel awards from graduate students in lit and cult studies and reserve them for comp/rhet. I am trying to suggest that our administrators and supportive faculty should acknowledge the problem as a problem and find new and other sources of Travel funding for graduate students in composition.

My professionalization is getting expensive.

reading notes

Notes on C. Barabas [CB], "Technical Writing in a Corporate Culture".

The easy questions:

When was it published?
1n 1990. It's part of a series called Writing research: Multidisciplinary Inquiries into the Nature of Writing. Marcia Farr, the series editor, thinks that the book is about “literacy”.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?
Anyone who is interested in the "burgeoning" field of research on writing. MF (ed) notes that a field is a "multidisciplinary entity" focused on a set of important questions about a central concern: in this case, literacy. A discipline shares "theoretical and methodological approaches which have a substantial tradition behind them":

"If research on writing evolves into a more unified discipline, rather than remaining a multifaceted field, much will be lost from the rich multiplicity of traditions which now contribute to it" (xvii).

So much for disciplinarity. However, Barabas notes that the work is intended for a more circumscribed "heterogenous" audience: tech writing researchers, teachers and practitioners (p. xl).

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing? Qualitative mixed-methods research: survey, dbi, ta, context-based experimental studies. CB notes that her methods are different from most research in the field of composition because it:

1) Focuses on interrelationships of writers, texts & readers (not in isolation)
2) Content-based
3) Real-world
4) Uses indigenous criteria for effective writing

(!) We don't get to the actual research until part 3.
(!) Not lots of references to the field of tech comm.
(!) Due to corporate nondisclosure rules, CB has to "contrive" the examples for her book. She notes that this is why LatourandWoolgar and KnorCetina chose to focus on drafts of published, company-sanctioned works.

The tough questions:

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?
Research in comp. and literacy had started to ask questions about real-world writing and writing in context, but we still didn't know very much about it.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?
TWCC is an inquiry into "what it means to write well in a corporate setting", where criteria are unclear and ambiguous. She wants to compare this to "our most cherished assumptions about writing and good writing" to make us more aware of differences btw real-world and academic settings.

What is the epistemological background? Huh. The shift to the reality of writing as it functions in the world of context(ie not in archives). Bazerman and Paradis also make this point. CB claims that this research cycles back to the function of writing at its origin, "ten millenia ago".

What is the argument?
Here are the shortcomings of comp: the emphasis on structure over substance, content and functions. The requirments and standards of writing in corporate settings are different, and teaching students to be "good academic writers" may inadvertently make them "poor real-world writers". Academic criteria linger in real-world writing, causing problems for (college-educated) real-world writers.

These are some strong claims here. It's nice that CB suggests that tech comm can tell comp. something. I think a consequence of the heightened specialization that defines tech comm apart from comp/rhet is that tech comm can't tell comp/rhet anything anymore -- tech comm has to stick to its own territory. Tell Ruth: This is a good argument for having resistant tech comm grad students (ie me) read in comp for the QE.

CB also clames that much other real-world writing research is based on a priori academic assumptions.

What evidence does the author bring?
A history of the interest in real-world writing, some research on sci and tech writing and the study.

What perspective does the author take?
CB is interested in the dissonance between academic and real-world writing.

What perspective is under-represented or missing?
How useful is this disctinction between academic and real-world writing? Zappen notices that scientific and technical writing have a lot in common depending on context. Can the same thing be said for academic and real-world writing?

Side Notes:

(!) "In our teaching of research and writing, we have gone a long way out of our wayb by ignoring the connection between writing and communication" (p. 5) .

B offers critiques of the 3 models from business / tech writing. (!) "What other skill-related disciplines, I wonder, have developed theories of proficiency by studying the abberant behavior of students?" (46).

(!) Students trained in the cognitive process model tend to take their writers on a "vicarious, cognitive journey". When they grow up, their real-world reports are structured inductively with extraneous info.

(!) It's hard to create meaningful nonacademic contexts when students know they're in an academic context.

(!) Writing is a context -- CB notes that a firm's upper won't streamline proposal writing practices, because the all-night cram sessions are exhilirating. Note: The middle-and-lower-level employees are NOT exhiliarated.

Most corporations need, but do not have, communication policies.

(!) This book seems to follow the cognitive model. I know what CB thought that made her write it (ie the dissonance between comp and corporate writing), the background for her model and her critique of earlier model. She might lose me before I get to the results.

(!) CB laments that the art of CYA is not covered in textbooks. Metis?

Corporate writers in some R&D organizations write "idea papers" .

In the organization studied by CB, only poor writers call their progress reports stories. This conflicts with something I read in Anderson, Brockman and Miller about stories.

CB concludes that the following shapes writing intentions:

1) General conceptions about comm, tech comm and what goes in a tech report.
2) Concepts that distinguish data, result and conclusion.
3) Awareness of general company expectations and guidelines.
4) Awareness of immediate directors' and supervisors' expectations and guidelines.

Academic tech writing traditionally only touches on 1 and 2. CB calls for guidelines in industry, real-world and direct contact between tech comm pedagogy and industry and covering stuff not usually dealt with in textbooks. She does not go so far as to suggest ways that students can uncover the tacit, organization-specific guidelines -- i.e. guerilla research techniques for figuring out the expectations.

bob + goldfish

I did it:

That is, I successfully composed a note replacing every "Go away! Stop bothering me!" with statements in the pattern of When you (blank) I feel (blank) because (blank).

On a side note, I love the note. While not reflective of the kind of invertebrate moaning I am prone to mock, it is not, on the other hand, one of my classic notes that reads as though penned by a random shakespearean insult generator.

Note: I may or may not send the note, viewing the note instead as an exercise for the other thing about the un or non invitation with the dinner. Isn't that what this is really about in the first place?

...

> So if you are feeling afraid or angry and you want me to know why, you could replace "Go away! Stop bothering me!" phrases like :

"I feel (insert feeling) when you (insert action) because (insert explanation)".

> OK! I feel like you are a jerk.

...

I hate: useless money that I technically have.

CHASE BASIC CHECKING $11.30 (Available balance) $963.16 (Present balance)

4

Thursday at 4 is the best point in the line of the week, when the cubes of State Hall open up and the concrete plane dissolves into the sky.

pms

For the next 2 days I am designed to be depressed, puffy and mad. It doesn't matter what is going on. I could spend all day designing an imaginary aircraft fueled by an endless supply of fries or receive a memo from Margaret that an error has been discovered in the language of my contract: I'm supposed to be paid for NOT teaching. Even chanting the facts of my real life does nothing [cw: 110, diss: going great, hair: Feb. 2, sex life: yes], and plus I have bad dreams.

(!)

"Rhetoricians and hindus are the same in one essential regard. Hinduism holds that everyone is hindu, and rhetoricians hold that everything is rhetorical". In Dombrowski, Humanistic Aspects of Technical Communication.

section 002

Prior to teaching I feel like I will never again be in bed watching High School Musical and that, from the State Hall window, my apartment may as well be in Africa.

At least that time there was not the thin stretch of time across Gratiot or the backdraft from a sudden loss of mass and energy.

stick figures in history

How stick people first migrated into American technical documents:



Sir, I will thank you very much if you will get introduced onto my Draught, a Figure of a Miller standing at the Spout A. viewing the wheat as it runs from the Waggoners Bag --

stooping a little resting hiself with his left hand on the side of the Spout, with his right hand full of wheat looking attentively at it this is the Millers Business in Real Practice and in my opinion will greatly adorn the Drought and convey a Striking Idea".

I am Sir with much Esteem
Your Humble servt
Oliver Evans [1791, qtd. in Brockman, 1998]

Unzipping in Linux

$gzip -d decompresses a zipped file in linux.

There is no untar command. Do

tar -xvvf foo.tar

or

tar -xvvzf foo.tar.gz.

Comment here if this post [found in a google search] helped prevent violence against computers.

reading notes

Notes on Markel, "Ethics in Tech Comm".

tags: BORING.

The easy questions:

When was it published?

2001, as part of ATTW studies in Technical Communication.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

Technical communication practitioners, teachers and researchers.

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

Markel calls the book "A critique and synthesis".

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

Lots of people had talked about rhetoric, tech comm and ethics. But there were 3 problems:

1) Ethics is conceived so broadly that it loses its connection to the study of values and conduct.
2) Ethics is conceived as a critique of capitalism.
3) Ethics is equated with ethos.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

To move beyond the rigid ideas suggested above, Markel sugests ways of looking at and talking about ethics -- not ethical heuristics.

What is the epistemological background?

Markel discusses the history of ethical theory as a logical, evidence-based enterprise: rights - based theories, utilitarian theories, transitional ideas and contemporary approaches. Ethics is important in rhet. (i.e. rhetoric entails action) and especially in tech. comm, when discourse is geared toward producing action.

What is the argument?

Ethics is not an abstract theory but a practical art.
Ethics is related but logically prior to rhetoric.
Values in action, the most sophisticated ethical perspective, derives from the history of philosophical ethics.
Business ethics can tell us stuff.
Ethical conversations work best in an open conversation involving all stakeholders.

What evidence does the author bring?

Markel's work is more exploratory, inviting the reader to think through case studies and hypothetical though experiments.

What perspective does the author take?

Two-part framework for thinking through ethics:
Determine the most ethical course of action [abstract]
Determine the most available ethical course of action [concrete]

Use discourse ethics to hold the conversation and the utility-rights-justice-care model to evaluate alternatives. [note: the urjc model will be applied differently by different stakeholders and lead to conflicted results].

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

Why not look at ethics as an inventional art -- take a step back and look at how people generate alternative courses of action, rather than just think through the available options?

reading notes

Notes on Markel, "Ethics in Tech Comm".

tags: BORING.

The easy questions:

When was it published?

2001, as part of ATTW studies in Technical Communication.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

Technical communication practitioners, teachers and researchers.

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

Markel calls the book "A critique and synthesis".

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the book reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

Lots of people had talked about rhetoric, tech comm and ethics. But there were 3 problems:

1) Ethics is conceived so broadly that it loses its connection to the study of values and conduct.
2) Ethics is conceived as a critique of capitalism.
3) Ethics is equated with ethos.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

To move beyond the rigid ideas suggested above, Markel sugests ways of looking at and talking about ethics -- not ethical heuristics.

What is the epistemological background?

Markel discusses the history of ethical theory as a logical, evidence-based enterprise: rights - based theories, utilitarian theories, transitional ideas and contemporary approaches. Ethics is important in rhet. (i.e. rhetoric entails action) and especially in tech. comm, when discourse is geared toward producing action.

What is the argument?

Ethics is not an abstract theory but a practical art.
Ethics is related but logically prior to rhetoric.
Values in action, the most sophisticated ethical perspective, derives from the history of philosophical ethics.
Business ethics can tell us stuff.
Ethical conversations work best in an open conversation involving all stakeholders.

What evidence does the author bring?

Markel's work is more exploratory, inviting the reader to think through case studies and hypothetical though experiments.

What perspective does the author take?

Two-part framework for thinking through ethics:
Determine the most ethical course of action [abstract]
Determine the most available ethical course of action [concrete]

Use discourse ethics to hold the conversation and the utility-rights-justice-care model to evaluate alternatives. [note: the urjc model will be applied differently by different stakeholders and lead to conflicted results].

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

2007 ATTW Acceptance Letter

Dear Hilary Ward:

On behalf of the ATTW, I am happy to invite you to present the panel titled "The Work of Anti-Discourse through Technology Use: From the Virtual to the Professional and the Mundane" at the 10th annual conference in New York City on Wednesday, March 21, 2007. Ultimately, fewer than 50% of proposals could be accepted this year.

Now that your proposal has been selected, you will have to prepare a conference paper on a topic in which you are no longer interested. Upon completion of the conference paper you will either: 1) go on an airplane to NY with Francie and Jessica or 2) go on a road trip to NY with Francie and Jessica. Har! Ellen may also be on the plane.

Please don't kill yourself. It looks bad to the ATTW when a funded student dies in her first semester of candidacy status.

Sincerely,

2007 ATTW Program Chair

reading notes

Notes on Faber, "Professional Identities: What's professional about professional communication?"

The Easy Questions.

When and where was it published?

2002 in JBTC.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

The readers of JBTC, or researchers (and teachers) who are interested in what Duin and Hansen would call "nonacademic writing". I wouldn't say that the article's primary audience is "just professional communication scholars / practitioners", because 1) It's too fuzzy of a field and 2) "Professional communicators" do not exist as a separate profession.

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

Hmm. I'd call it "A critical discussion of professional identity". That's what Faber calls it. Is a "discussion" a valid genre of research?

The article has an empirical section about the meaning of professional communication in JBTC, JBWC and TCQ.

The Tough Questions

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it – how does the article reflect the conversation that has been taking place in the field?

Professional communication was a catchall phrase for workplace/business writing, and did not focus on or explore interesting issues like professional status and the process of professionalization.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

Faber focuses on:

1) How researchers have used the term "professional communication" to describe the rhet. of professionals who communicate.

2) Institutional and content conflicts between rhetorical scholarship and professional powers.

3) Current issues: deprofessionalization and proletariatization.

The above focii help us to more deeply investigate the concept of professionalization.

What is the epistemological background?

What is the argument?
If professional communication research and teaching are going to be viable, professional communication scholars need to be aware of the conceputal underpinnings of professional work.

What evidence does the author bring?
Articles suggesting that professional communicators are distinct from workplace writers in their special relationship w/ a specific and known audience, social responsibility and self-reflexive ethical awareness.

What perspective does the author take?

What perspective is under-represented or missing?

For a smart girl, Hilary sure entertained herself with a circus of provincial ideas.

Some of these ideas required her to suspend reasonable doubt. The rest were about a personalized tractor beam.

reading notes

Notes on Allen, "The Case Against Defining Technical Writing".

The easy questions:

When was it published?

1990 in JBTC.

What group of scholars is the author addressing?

Technical writing scholars (primary, I think) and practitioners (secondary, I think).

What is the genre and what type of research is the author doing?

It's almost anti-prescriptive: let's not define technical writing, because no definition will adequately describe what tech writing is. Allen focuses more on describing what definitions do -- and the impact of definition questions on tech writing -- than on describing what tech writers do.

Coming soon: The Tough Questions

Right after I have my twix bar.

What was going on in the field when the author wrote it, and how does the article reflect that conversation?

Allen's article is about what wasn't going on: No definition of tech writing had emerged as universally acceptable, despite a history of foiled attempts to create one. (!) So the STC relegated the definition problem to its academic branch c 1990.

What aspects of knowledge does the author focus on and why does the author focus on these aspects of knowledge?

Given the historical thread on defining tech. writing, Allen focuses on the thrills and perils of definitions in general and definitions of tech writing in particular.

What is the epistemological background?

A graveyard of failed definitions, from Britton and Lay's "One meaning and only one meaning"(unrealistic!) to Dobrin's "writing that accomodates technology to the user" (circular!).

What is the argument?

No definition will adequately describe technical writing: "Perhaps we should get over our embarassment at not having a definition for technical writing and abandon the search altogether".

What evidence does the author bring?

Here's why we've been trying to come up with that definition:

1) Clarify disciplinary boundaries.
2)Identify appropriate topics for research.
3) Reflect professional values (helps w/professional status).

Definition problems:

1) Inflection problem -- content-dependent definitions have to say what is technical and what is not, style-dependent definitions don't exclude, for example, Hemingway and put a devious emphasis on clarity.

2) Do we define tech writing by what it is or by what it should be -- how to assess goodness or badness of tech writing against the definition?

3) The false inform / persuade binary.

Case against defining:

Tech writing definitions reinforce:
1) False and blurry lines.
2) The science / humanities split.
3) Existing practices (can't anticipate the future, esp. of new media).

We're doing fine without a definition: our "impressionistic, experience-based" ideas of what tech writing is will suffice to keep the field intact: it would be hard to make up a definition as functional as our good, flexible and fuzzy ideas about tech writing.

What perspective does the author take?

Tacit knowledge is fine.

What perspective is missing?

With no definition, how do tech comm scholars and practitioners represent our field to interdisciplinary colleagues, prospective employers and funding agencies?

Interesting notes:

(!) The STC doesn't think that cookbooks constitute technical writing, but Allen beleives that they do. CF Gorgias, rhetoric = cookery.

(!) Bleeding-edge technical writing practices tend to forge a bridge between the sciences and humanities, even as tech. writing defintions try to enforce a two-culture split.