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As the most observant ones among you may have noticed, we have just embarked on a new millennium. Newspapers and other media have used this numeric occasion to name the greatest artist, man, author, book, etc, of the previous millennium - based on the last two decades.
For technical communicators, usually busy looking ahead, this is an occasion to review our history and achievements so far, and the development of our slightly strained relationship with those who tend to emphasize the T and disregard the C in TC: the developers.
The First Developer
The first developer worked for six days and rested on the seventh. Since any successful development project is a solo effort, we know little of the preparations. But as far as we know, there were no specifications or documentation at that time. This may be why we turned out the way we did. If you look at Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of a man with 4 arms and 4 legs, this may well have been a specification for humans, but the developer considered it too user-friendly.
WYSIWYG or DOS?
Most of what we consider modern in the computer business is in fact old news. Acronyms like HEAD (High-End Analytical Device) have been accepted as ordinary words. And in the Garden of Eden, you found both Apple and a sly consultant. And, in fact, there is both a WYSIWYG and a DOS version of Creation. The WYSIWYG (Eden) version started with a completed user interface, and productive user interaction, and has changed little since then. The developer has not been directly involved, but has Call Centres all around the world for FAQ and maintenance.
The DOS version of Creation started out with a big bang, and has developed slowly into today’s whimpering user interface. Due to the constant development, without any major releases, there was no need for documentation. Charles Darwin retro-documented this evolution a little late for any real use.
Take Two Stone Tablets and Call Me in the Morning
After a few million years, the Developer decided that a Quick Lookup Guide would be useful for the Creation to be used appropriately, so he published ten commandments. If the Developer had been familiar with Information Mapping, the number of commandments would have been reduced to seven plus/minus two.
The first attempt at establishing a Microsoft-like construction took place in Babel, but the localization centre in Galway wasn’t quite ready yet.
Little has changed. Stone tablets from 3000 BC indicate an advanced TC culture, featuring symbols, frames, 3D, and Wingdings. Almost three thousand years later, a unique multinational documentation was produced on the Rosetta Stone, with the same text in Egyptian (hieroglyphs), Demotic, and Greek.
Ancient Egypt probably also had a large TC community. After all, pyramids are hardly built by accident. There are well-preserved remains of cartoon-like instructions for the production of vases and the dressing of cats.
But when developers set fire to the library in Alexandria, all the technical documentation and other books were lost. Recent excavations, however, have uncovered a library loan card for Pyramids for Dummies, The Little Pyramid on the Prairie and Not Without My Mummy.
Creation/NT
When a new version of the Creation documentation set was published about two thousand years ago, one writer claimed that "In the beginning was the Word". Technical communicators evidently appreciated this tribute. But when the writer goes on to say that "the Word was God", that is, the Documentation was the Developer, one suspects a certain pressure from the R&D department.
One interesting aspect of the new documentation set, aka NT, is the use of hypertext links and workflow. There are a number of references to features and promises in the old documentation set, which have been fulfilled in the NT. They also used four writers to cover the same development - in order to increase reliability. Or to allow for multiple interpretations.
Images - Documentation or Specification?
Even as the Roman alphabet developed into our current version, illustrations continued to play an important part. For instance, in the brothel in Pompeii, Italy, illustrations above the doors to the rooms explain what kinds of services are provided. No words are needed - not even four-letter ones. Pixel-based mosaic became old-fashioned after a while, as image resolution improved.
Images have traditionally been interpreted as invaluable historical documentation of, for instance, clothing, tools, etc. We should, however, be open to the possibility that for contemporaries, some of the ancient illustrations are in fact specifications and drafts - such as Da Vinci’s four-armed man, just like his airplanes and machine gun. The Bayeux tapestry may have been the science fiction movie of their time. Can you prove it wasn’t?
The Threat of Technical Documentation
When Gutenberg printed the first book, it didn’t take long before developers were burning books - and threw the odd communicator on the fire as well.
The technical communicators have improved through the ages, but you can’t avoid blunders. We all know that a developer’s last minute discovery need not be reflected as the communicator’s last page note. Unfortunately, this was the case with Getting Started with the Titanic. The captain never got as far as the page where it says that icebergs should be avoided.
Technical communication is a relatively peaceful vocation, and documentation is usually considered boring. Military documentation, however, has always been attractive. In certain African countries, there’s a death penalty for owning a user’s manual to guns. The gun itself is not dangerous; it’s the knowledge that kills. And computer documentation has never been more popular than behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s and 80s.
If you have wondered why Saddam Hussein hasn’t used his weapons of mass destruction more effectively, the most probable reason is that he’s still waiting for the Getting Started manual. Or maybe the developers never bothered to explain the trigger function, since it was so intuitive.
We’re now into the new millennium with more media than ever to use for technical communication. But given the challenges and possibilities of palmtops and WAPs and all, it’s uncertain whether we will return to the primitive art of Stone Age cavemen, or to a technological Garden of Eden. Knowledge never tasted this sweet.