#27995
Using Adoption Metaphors to Increase Customer Acceptance
We know a product has a lifecycle, but does the language we use for that product also have a lifecycle? From TiVo to the Internet Superhighway, Rice shows us how the metaphors we use have an evoluation all their own.
Rice, Sarah A. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Language>Technology>Tropes
#24454
Using Virtual Reality in Education 
Virtual Reality is a three-dimensional, computer-generated, simulated environment where data is literally transformed into things we can see, feel, and even touch. Virtual reality has significant implications in many areas such as business, industry, entertainment, and most importantly for educators, education. We have a responsibility to learn more about this new technology and investigate uses for our students. Then we need to encourage the continuing research, development, and implementation of virtual reality environments for educational purposes.
Rudin, Judy E. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Technology
#13453
A View from the Crossroads: New Hope for the Technologically Oppressed
Recent advances in technology have brought today’s technical communicators to a crossroads. Writers are faced with the choice of learning a host of new skills not related to traditional writing skills or of becoming dependent on specialists in other fields to complete the technical communication process. By viewing new technologies asopportunities rather than problems, writers can gain control of the media as well as the message, increasing their ability to control the entire communication process.
Weber, Barbara C. and Arthur H. Pike. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Writing>Technology
#29305
A View of the Future: Trends in Research, Ethnography and Design
Innovation is more often than not the result of many pieces of valuable information such as general observations both conscious and subconscious, media influences, interactions, discussions as well as a mix of intuition and common sense.
Veikkola, Timo. uiGarden (2007). Articles>Technology>Planning
#24544
Virtual Reality, Combat, and Communication 
A brief examination of the evolution of virtual reality devices illustrates how the development of this new medium is influenced not only by emerging technologies but also by marketing pressures. In a situation parallel to that of the earliest computers, both military and game applications seem to be the driving forces in virtual reality development. Understanding these influences may help us prepare for the role of technical communicators in building virtual reality applications for education and industry and aid us in predicting and influencing both the technology and the ways we prepare communicators for the future.
Thrush, Emily A. and Michael Bodary. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2000). Articles>Technology
#11899
Virus Alert: Understanding the Risks 
Computer viruses are human created vices that will be around for as long as there are files and programs to corrupt. This article explains what types of viruses are out there, and how to prevent their spread.
Holtey, Dugan. EServer (2001). Articles>Technology>Security>Viruses
#20528
A Visualizer is Not Just a "Document Camera"
It is known by many names: Visualizer, Visual Presenter, Visual Copy Stand even the misnomer, “Document Camera.” “Document Camera” is the most commonly used name, however they are much more than just a “Document Camera.” And, it is not an overhead projector where you can show documents either. It is truly much more than this. A Visualizer is a 'live' camera that picks up live images and allows you to view them over any display device. The true beauty of Visualizers can be summed up in one word – flexibility. It can be a piece of paper, a transparency, a 3-dimensional object, a 35mm slide, an x-ray or even a large item or person in a room. Quite an amazing and versatile device, and all in live motion.
Presenters University (2003). Articles>Presentations>Technology>Microsoft PowerPoint
#14744
Perlin discusses the latest developments in voice portal technology.
Perlin, Neil E. Intercom (2002). Articles>Technology>Software>Voice
#20226
The web services concept being championed by computing giants like Sun, Oracle, HP, Microsoft, and IBM is a great step towards simple access to software over the network. By promoting standards–based communication, web services might change the way we build websites.
Cooney, Patrick. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Technology
#26416
What is a Good First Programming Language?
Programming is an art. As with any other art, it is important to use the right medium. In programming, this translates to the choice of programming language. But why should one pay so much attention to one's first programming language?
Gupta, Diwaker. ACM Crossroads (2004). Articles>Technology>Programming
#19092
What's the Balance? Technical Communicator or Technical Communicator?
When developing a technical communication program, program developers need to determine how technical their programs will be. In my part of the country, for example, the prevailing philosophy for many years was that you could take technical people and teach them to write easier than you could take trained communicators and teach them the needed technical information. Ads for technical communicators across the country scream for knowledge and sometimes expertise in a wide range of computer software, and usually it is not only knowledge of formatting technical documents as in Frame, or Power Point, or HTML, but also knowledge of and again sometimes expertise about the scientific and technical subjects about which they write.
Little, Sherry Burgus. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Technology
#22433
Review: What's the Matter with the Internet?
You should not read this book if you're looking for the final answer to what's the matter with the Internet. Poster points us toward the issues that he thinks will affect the Internet's ultimate shape—politics, authorship, ethnicity, citizenship, identity—but he leaves us with more questions than answers. By questioning and observing, and by applying key technological theories, he suggests a way of approaching a critique of the Internet.
Kitalong, Karla Saari. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Reviews>Technology>Theory
#23376
Working in the Liberal Arts/Technology Borderlands
One border that technical and professional communication (TPC) programs straddle constantly is that between the liberal arts and technology. We struggle to find ways to do justice to both as we prepare our students to enter these professions.
Allen, Nancy J. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Technology
#31831
Workshops on Teaching with Technology
Links, references, advice and tips on teaching with technology that are drawn together for campus workshops and faculty discussions.
#30647
The Writing Process and Writing Technology: A Pre-Study for the Scribani Project
One of the most common interdisciplinary feature in modern education seems to be an increasing interest in writing. While studies on this topic have already been carried out for a long time, only in the last decades the continuous technological changes have provided the means to develop more and more advanced tools to support writing (word processors are just a small example of such tools). Therefore, many research efforts have been made in order to design and develop computer writing environments.
Rossitto, Chiara. Royal Institute of Technology (2004). Articles>Writing>Technology>Scandinavia
#13064
The notes below apply to technical papers in computer science and electrical engineering, with emphasis on papers in systems and networks. Papers can be divided roughly into two categories, namely original research papers and survey papers. There are papers that combine the two elements, but most publication venues either only accept one or the other type or require the author to identify whether the paper should be evaluated as a research contribution or a survey paper.
Kaiser, Gail, Craig Partridge, Sumit Roy, Eric Siegel, Sal Stolfo, Luca Trevisan, Yechiam Yemini and Erez Zadok. Columbia University (2001). Articles>Writing>Technology
#15029
Review: Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy
In these days of dizzying technological change, it is difficult for teachers of composition not to be enthusiastic about the ever expanding arsenal of literacy tools at our disposal. From the myriad possibilities of networked classrooms to the disseminal opportunities of the World Wide Web, these technologies offer us promising venues in which to teach the craft of writing to our students, who seem more than eager to embrace these digital technologies. Yet anyone who remembers the days before word processors realizes that the relationship between writer and text has changed, and not just because of poststructural theorists like Barthes and Foucault. While word processors undoubtedly have eased our production and revision of texts, they have also altered our spatial and tactile relationship to the writing process. And some would argue these changes are not necessarily for the better; perhaps all of us in the computers and writing community know a Luddite colleague who eschews the technological elegance of an Apple PowerBook for the simpler pleasures of an antique fountain pen and hand-bound writing journal. To the technological cognoscenti, such resistance seems at times like quaint nostalgia for a world that is quickly disappearing. But the more I scour the digital landscape to keep abreast of new technologies, the more a gnawing question tugs at my synapses: 'What is being gained and what is being lost as the tools of literacy increase in complexity?'
Honeycutt, Lee. Kairos (1997). Resources>Reviews>Technology>Writing
#14021
Writing, Literacy and Technology: Toward a Cyborg Writing
Like Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Lyotard, and others, Haraway calls for a conception of writing (“cyborg writing,” in her terms) that resists authoritative, phallogocentric writing practices, that foregrounds the writer’s own situatedness in history and in his or her writing practice, and that makes visible the very “apparatus of the production of authority” that all writers tend to submerge in their discourse. This is not to say that writers must “eschew” authority, but that in a truly ethical and postmodern stance they must reveal how authority is implicated in discourse. And because writing is inseparable both from its own embodied situatedness and from systems of liberation and domination, “literacy” should be a central concern of us all.
Olson, Gary A. JAC (1996). Articles>Rhetoric>Technology
#21065
Yale Journal of Law and Technology
The Yale Journal of Law and Technology (YJoLT) is the first law review in the world to offer its readership a cutting-edge dynamic environment in which to acquire and produce knowledge about the interface between law and technology. Formerly the Yale Symposium on Law & Technology, the Journal not only publishes lectures and written pieces by the diverse and distinguished guests of Yale Law School as well as other scholars, practitioners, and students, it also provides a forum for a robust community discussion of the issues raised in its published pieces.
#24543
"You Will": Technology, Magic, and the Cultural Contexts of Technical Communication
Technology is commonly described in magical terms, not only in advertising but also in journalism and technical communication. This article provides some background on the use of magical language in technical contexts, gives examples of magical discourse in technology advertisements and newsmagazine articles, and proposes a technical communication pedagogy of media analysis. The proposed pedagogy involves students in conducting diagnostic critiques of media texts and affords them the opportunity to examine critically their own unwitting use of magical language in technical discourse.
Kitalong, Karla Saari. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2000). Articles>Technology
#32092
A Curmudgeon's Guide to Computer Documentation
Is documentation a bad word? It is if you’re the Curmudgeon, a character I invented, who some say bears an amazing resemblance to … me.
West, Mike. MBWest.com. Articles>Documentation>Technology>Technical Writing
#32340
It has been predicted that new information and communication technologies (ICTs) will be adopted for increasingly diversified purposes. In general, it has been argued that earlier forms of communication and mass media are being replaced by new ones. Before the early 1990s, however, neither mobile phones nor the internet were widely available to consumers. It is reasonable to ask whether the relatively recent implementation of ICT has shaped our daily practices already as much as many social scientists believe. Is it true that the new forms of technology are considered to be more important than the older ones? What differences can be observed between population groups? This article examines the perceptions of different mass media forms and communication technologies in Finland before and after the turn of the millennium. The data consist of two nationally representative postal surveys conducted in 1999 and 2004.
Räsänen, Pekka. New Media and Society (2008). Articles>Technology>Regional>Scandinavia
#32345
This study extends diffusion research to the intra-organizational level and integrates the classic diffusion of innovation theory (DIT) with the relatively new technology acceptance model (TAM) to empirically explore Chinese journalists' adoption of the internet. It makes a theoretical contribution by proposing four adoption categories — voluntary adopters, forced adopters, resistant non-adopters, and dormant non-adopters — according to the voluntariness of organizational members' innovation decision-making. Based on data from a nationwide survey of 813 journalists in China, this study demonstrates that the DIT and TAM are respectively related to voluntary and forced adoption of the internet.Young, male journalists who perceive the internet positively (i.e., relative advantage and ease of use) and think it to be popular in society are most likely to be voluntary adopters. High-ranking journalists who believe the internet can enhance their job performance and who work in large and technologically sophisticated organizations are most likely to be forced adopters.
Zhou, Yuqiong. New Media and Society (2008). Articles>Technology>Organizational Communication>Usability
#32617
Work activities that are mediated by information rely on the production of discourse-based objects of work. Designs, evaluations, and conditions are all objects that originate and materialize in discourse. They are created and maintained through the coordinated efforts of human and non-human agents. Genres help foster such coordination from the top down, by providing guidance to create and recreate discourse objects of recurring social value. From where, however, does coordination emerge in more ad hoc discursive activities, where the work objects are novel, unknown, or unstable? In these situations, coordination emerges from simple discursive operations, reliably mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs) that appear to act as discursive agents. This article theorizes the discursive agency of ICTs, explores the discursive operations they mediate, and the coordination that emerges. The article also offers and models a study methodology for the empirical observation of such interactions.
Swarts, Jason. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Technology>Research>Contextual Inquiry
#32645
The Education of Geeks and Freaks
if Post Secondary Educators don’t change their attitude towards you—and soon—you are going to find it really hard to find trained staff for your businesses.
Green, Tom. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Education>Technology>Multimedia
