![]() If that end goal guides your action, you’re a true artist if you’re just focused on lining up 2x4s, you’re a technician. For example, house builders are not just nailing wood together to build a house for the sake of having a house effective housebuilders perceive the end of their craft as creating livable spaces for families to comfortably dwell. Johnson’s goal in citing these scholars is to debunk the idea that “craft knowledge” is an oxymoron, or in other words, to argue that craftsmen are in fact operating with strategic knowledge. The specific end of the art is its work, and this is always something good or useful for some end. He will then be a technician rather than a true artist, for he knows only the conditions of the art, not the art itself. Johnson also draws upon John Wild, interpreting Aristotle, to explain that a concern for the end purpose of craft is what separates the artist from the technician:Ī man may know all the rules of a certain art, but if he does not know when and where to apply them, the ‘effects’ will be of no real use. Thus, products of human making are essentially inert until they are placed into use… The end of the housebuilding, for example, is neither the builder’s use of the art nor the house itself, but rather then use made of the house by those for whom it was constructed. The end of an art is not a product, but the use made of an artistic construct. He then draws upon Janice Lauer and Janet Atwill’s explanation of telos (or end purpose and design): Beyond the product, however, is the use (or uses) for the product. The initial end is the thing being produced, the product. … techne and the arts of making have two ends ( telos). Robert Johnson, a professor of writing, explains that when the Greeks proposed theories about craft (the making of things, or techne), the craftsmen didn’t merely have the product as the end goal, but rather the thing for which the product was intended. The reason we write documentation is not to produce a document, but rather to put into action what the document describes. However, this mindset gets us into trouble. My only concern is within the experience of those using the widget’s documentation. My role is simply to describe how the widget works - to produce documentation for it. For example, I might say to myself: I didn’t design the widget, so why should I care if it fails? It’s not my brainchild. I don’t always exclude myself from this camp - one has to draw boundaries somewhere. ![]() For example, I might draw boundaries around my responsibilities by saying, My task is to describe how this widget works, but it is the product marketing team’s job to get people to use it. Some technical writers might think these larger trajectories are beyond the concerns of the technical writer. Many technical writers focus only on the immediate technical task before them and fail to grasp trajectories from a larger view. ![]() ![]() You can download the MP3 file, subscribe in iTunes, Google Podcasts, or other podcast platforms. Academic/Practitioner Conversations Project.Author in DITA and Publish with WordPress.Reflecting seven years later about why we were laid off.A hypothesis about influence on the web and the workplace.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |