In the pre-Internet era, magazines were an important resource for computer hobbyists to obtain useful technical information. The August 1994 issue of PC Computing above was a treasure trove of DOS and Windows 3.1 computing information. My original copy was dogeared and contained copious notes in the margins.While there are still many computer magazines being published, most finding help, tips, and other technical information has shifted to the Internet and found through search tools like Google or through inquiries placed on social media (e.g., Reddit). That information, how it’s presented, and how it is found are all examples of technical communication.

For this week’s class:

• Weekly Reading Report Exercise
• Reminder About Google UX Researcher’s Talk Tonight
• Let’s discuss your LinkedIn Profiles
  • Publish your work on CUNY Academicworks, and link to that work in the Projects section of your LinkedIn Profile.
• Discuss this week’s readings
• Perform Peer Review on last week’s deliverable
• Use Feedback to begin writing Report deliverable
• Review syllabus about next week’s readings and work

The above outlining (left) and organizing (right, a lite form of information architecture) are not final deliverables, but doing the work that goes into them might help us create better and more effective technical communication deliverables. The outlining and brainstorming on the left led to an academic conference paper. The organizing on the left using a refrigerator, dry erase markers, index cards, and magnetic clips led to an academic conference program. Both were low-tech ways to organize and categorize ideas before formalizing them in a paper for public presentation or a printed program saying which presentations are grouped together and presented in a space at a given time.

For this week’s class:

• Weekly Reading Report Exercise
• Discuss this week’s readings
• Introduce this week’s (and next’s) deliverable: Reports
• My Professional Work, Our Sandbox Exercise
• Perform Peer Review on last week’s deliverable
• Begin working on this week’s deliverable for Reports
• Review syllabus about next week’s readings and work.

Considering the STC’s definition of technical communication, communicating with technology is one characteristic of technical communication. The proliferation of reading on screens therefore an explosion of technical communication. While today the Kindle and other e-ink readers dominate long-form reading using technology, there is a long history of improving how we read text on screens so that it was more comfortable, portable, and interactive. One example of that is Sony’s Data Discman or Electronic Book Player originally launched in the west in 1991.

Another example is Voyager Company’s Expanded Books, also launched in 1991, which were distributed on floppy disks and designed for Apple Macintosh computers–especially the Macintosh Portable and subsequent PowerBook line of Mac laptops. In addition to reading the book on a computer screen, Expanded Books included bookmarking, searching, and note taking features. Some Expanded Books, such as the edition of Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, included audio files for the sounds of the various dinosaurs in the novel (this was before Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film adaptation).

For this week’s class:

• Weekly Reading Report Exercise
• Perform Peer Review on last week’s deliverable (Memo)
• Discuss this week’s readings
  • Also, let’s look at this and this
• Introduce this week’s deliverable: Proposal
• Review syllabus about next week’s readings and work