A Comment on Greg Wilson's “Technical Communication and Late Capitalism: Considering a Postmodern Technical Communication Pedagogy”

Greg Wilson, in his article “Technical Communication and Late Capitalism: Considering a Postmodern Technical Communication Pedagogy,” calls for a technical communication pedagogy that prepares students to assume more stable and fulfilling jobs in the shifting conditions of a postindustrial economy. His argument springs from his experience as a technical communicator in which he was dissatisfied with his position as a scribe or translator, a position that limited his agency. Drawing on Johndan JohnsonEilola’s idea that workers have to articulate themselves as invaluable to the organization, not as expendable commodities, and Robert Reich’s role of the symbolic-analytic worker, Wilson argues that technical communicators need to be trained as symbolic analysts because agency is most available to this type of worker. Specifically, Wilson offers a mapping exercise that operates as a heuristic for students to understand the four basic skills necessary of symbolicanalytic workers: abstraction, systems thinking, experimentation, and collaboration. We find Wilson’s argument compelling insofar as it emphasizes the importance of technical communication pedagogies that are informed by changing workplace conditions. We agree with his notion that we need to develop teaching strategies that help students complicate their thinking, both about the work they do and their role in the workplace. As Wilson implies, many of the issues that influence the identity of the field within the university also influence the perception of the practice in the workplace. His article revolves around a