Good, Evil and Technology: A Fun Philosophical Inquiry

Are there good websites and evil websites? Rarely. Most things we know and use fall in between: tools are amoral. They don’t prevent someone from using them for bad or work better when used for good. Great software performs just as well when you’re drafting praise for homeless shelter volunteers as when you’re writing recipes for orphan stew. If we want to claim that the things we make are good or bad, we have to go beyond their function. Goodness, in the moral sense, means something very different from good in the engineering sense.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Technology>Theory

Hewlett-Packard's CapShare 920 Portable E-Copier/Scanner  

The Hewlett-Packard CapShare 920 is designed to copy blocks of print and graphics as you pass it over the hardcopy document. If the size of the block to be scanned exceeds the 51/4-inch width of the scanner's surface, the HP Capshare 920 automatically pieces the output of successive swaths into one document. Stored documents can be transmitted to a computer as a graphics file, and text images can be converted to text files using ScanSoft's TextBridge optical character recognition (OCR) software included with the package. You can view demonstrations of the scanner at www. capshare.hp.com. in five to fifteen seconds to devices equipped with fast infrared (FIR) and in fifteen to thirty seconds to devices equipped with serial infrared (SIR). The scanner uses Scan Soft's Pagis Pro 2.0 software to organize files, clean up documents, and send both to other applications.

Wallia, C.J.S. Intercom (2006). Articles>Technology>Scanning

Hiding in Plain Sight: An Interview with Adam Greenfield

Is everyware overwriting what we know as everyday? On the heels of finishing his first book, Adam Greenfield talks with Boxes and Arrows about Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing and how the concepts are reshaping our lives.

Danzico, Liz. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Technology>Cultural Theory

Historical Patterns in the Scholarship of Technology Transfer  

Offers an historian's view of the development of the scholarship about technology transfer over the past half century, interweaving two primary threads. First, it identifies events and circumstances that have influenced and shaped real-world efforts to move technology in its many guises across boundaries— national, geographic, institutional, organizational, social, or otherwise. These historical situations have had a profound impact on the efforts of American policymakers and leaders in business, government, universities, and nongovernmental organizations who deal with technology transfer. These circumstances have produced significant changes of emphasis in the definition of technology transfer at different points in time.

Seely, Bruce E. Johns Hopkins University (2003). Articles>TC>History>Technology

How Microsoft Lost the API War

Microsoft's crown strategic jewel, the Windows API, is lost. The cornerstone of Microsoft's monopoly power and incredibly profitable Windows and Office franchises, which account for virtually all of Microsoft's income and covers up a huge array of unprofitable or marginally profitable product lines, the Windows API is no longer of much interest to developers. The goose that lays the golden eggs is not quite dead, but it does have a terminal disease, one that nobody noticed yet.

Spolsky, Joel. Joel on Software (2004). Articles>Technology>Software>Microsoft Windows

How Safe is the Data on Your Hard Disk?

As a technical writer with above average organizational skill, you likely already keep your files in nice little subdirectories in logical little groups -- User's Guide illustrations here, research notes there, stuff for the service manual over yonder. But what if, in an instant, your files were all taken out of their subdirectories and put in one big directory? Could you distinguish one file from the other without opening them up? You can only assume that files with identical names disappeared.

Varney, Gord. Boston Broadside (1991). Articles>Technology>Security

How Slides and Transparencies Stack Up to Micro and Ultraportables

Microportable and ultraportable projectors are changing how Corporate America presents information, sells products and trains employees and customers. Small enough to fit in a brief case, light enough to carry from appointment to appointment and easy enough to use without extensive training, these projectors deliver big, brilliant video, graphic and data images that are sure to grab and hold the attention of audiences.

Presenters University (2003). Articles>Presentations>Technology>Microsoft PowerPoint

How Usability and Audit Contribute to Product Design

It is almost impossible to do business without using information technology (IT) systems, whether or not they are developed in-house. Evaluating the quality of these systems is critical to an organization’s ability to do business using resources in an optimal way.

Manhaeve, Rik. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability>Technology

The Human Experience

There has been a lot of talk about technology and human experience. Many people believe that technology is bad in the sense that it is making us more and more detached from humanity. The web has much to do with technology. Take cinema for example: films were once genuinely hand crafted and dealt with humanity. Today many films are all technology and deal almost entirely with technology.

Fox, Justin. Digital Web Magazine (2000). Articles>Human Computer Interaction>Technology

The Human Side of the Digital Divide: Media Experience as the Border of Communication Satisfaction With Email    

Electronic mail (email) has rapidly become one of the most prominent communication media, and a substantial amount of information is processed by it in the contemporary workplace. It is well known that digital technology produces a "digital divide." In addition, it is well examined that the digital divide produces cognitive differences (e.g., knowledge gaps) among users. Yet, little is known about affective disparities. In addition, few studies on the digital divide were undertaken in organizational setting. This study considers the human side of the digital divide in an organizational setting and investigates if the digital divide exists in the workplace by examining multiple dimensions of communication satisfaction. The data from 303 university employees indicates that email experience differentiates communication satisfaction with amount of email and email use for equivocal tasks.

Ishii, Kumi. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Technology>Email>Workplace

I RTFM, But It's Still Greek to Me

You've heard it from your geeky friends: RTFM, politely translated as 'Read the Freaking Manual.' But what if the manual is unreadable? It's difficult enough to upgrade a motherboard or install new hardware, but it can become a disaster when the only help you've got is a poorly translated, barely legible photocopied manual loaded with vague definitions and unhelpful diagrams. And all too often, that's the way it is.

Krasne, Alexandra. PC World (2001). Articles>Documentation>Technology

I Wonder What This Button Does

We've all lost work to file overwrites and other minor disasters. There are remedies--and as Mike West explains, you don't have to have awe-inspiring technical skills to take advantage of them.

West, Mike. List Apart, A (2006). Articles>Project Management>Technology

IBM ViaVoice, Millenium Edition  

Schulter reviews the performance of IBMís latest speech recognition software.

Schulter, David. Intercom (2000). Articles>Technology>Software>Voice

Infoneering: Beauty and the Beast

As someone who has been working as a writer in the high-technology field for better than a dozen years now, I have been watching with interest and enthusiasm the slow convergence of the disciplines of writing, interface design, and engineering. In the design of integrated help systems particularly, the traditional boundaries for developing content, interfaces, and features have blurred—resulting in a collaborative enterprise that I refer to as infoneering.

Sesnovich, Bruce A. Boston Broadside (2001). Articles>Writing>Technology

Integrating New Technology into Technical Communication Curricula  

An increasing number of articles are appearing in communications journals calling for the need for instruction in new technology in the classroom. However, there are several obstacles in integrating new technology, such as Iack of teacher experience, lack of equipment, and adjusting the curriculum. To successfully integrate new technology into the curriculum, technical communication educators need to cooperate with other departments, make themselves available for training, and decide on which courses will integrate which technologies.

Campbell, Jennifer. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Education>Technology

Interactive Digital Presentations

As we enter the millennium, more and more people are learning how to utilize technology in their presentations. We are no longer limited to a laptop, projector and screen. Digital whiteboards are becoming more widely used in a presentation environment and this course will explain how to utilize this technology.

Presenters University (2002). Articles>Presentations>Technology

International Considerations in Creating Computer Documentation  

In creating computer software manuals, international users have become an important factor in design decisions. This paper discusses several issues and strategies useful in creating documentation with an international audience in mind.

Smart, Karl L. and Robert Bringhurst. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Technology>International

The Internet Explained  

The exponential growth of the Internet has been phenomenal. Or has it? Perhaps it is only to be expected when the cumulative acts of creation culminate in the proliferation of Mankind's greatest achievement: the ability to communicate... Some 45 years ago the search for knowledge was no less insatiable but the storage, collation, selection and retrieval technologies were rudimentary and the expense enormous by today's standards....

Vincent Zegna. Search and Go (2005). Articles>Internet>Technology

Internet Technology and Intellectual Property  

This article outlines the complex legal environment surrounding the Internet, copyright law, and intellectual property.

Le Vie, Donald S., Jr. Intercom (2000). Articles>Technology>Intellectual Property

The Issue of Archiving and Obsolescence

We can be almost certain that CDs will be obsolete in about five years. But what should we do about it?

Pinkham, Gordon. MetroVoice (2004). Articles>TC>Technology>Standards

It's Not the Tool, It's the Writer

This blog post ponders whether or not technical communicators are sometimes too enamoured with the tools, and because of that lose sight of what's best for the reader.

DMN Communications (2008). Articles>TC>Technical Writing>Technology

Just Kick It: Six Things You Can Do to Make Your Computer Run Faster

Are you frustrated by a computer that slows your productivity? Do you ever get the urge to kick it or throw it out the window? Before you hurt your toe or strain your back, there are a few simple things you can try to tune-up your computer and make it run faster.

Schurtz, Renee. Usability Interface (2005). Articles>Documentation>Technology

The Latest Word  

Wallia introduces some of the attractive features of Word 2002 and discusses the relative merits of four best-selling books on how to use the software.

Wallia, C.J.S. Intercom (2002). Articles>Technology>Software>Microsoft Word

Learning the Hard Way: How I Learned to K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid)

I used to believe that if you knew a subject well enough and were passionate about it, you could pen a masterpiece. But it was two years of working as an IT journalist (and never really understanding or liking it!) that actually taught me how to write.

Dower, Sophia. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Writing>Journalism>Technology

The Life Cycle of a Technology: Why it is So Difficult for Large Companies to Innovate

Donald Norman recommends a list of books on human-centered design.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1998). Articles>Management>Technology