Tactical Technical Communication

A decade ago, I was struck by the realization that almost all of the scholarship in our field focuses on the technical communication that happens within organizations, or that is produced by organizations to engage with their members, constituents, or customers (Kimball, 2006). In our scholarship, pedagogy, and practice, we regularly assume that the basic unit for consideration, the scope, is some sort of formal organization: a corporation, a government agency, or an institution. This organizational assumption has come under increasing scrutiny by others, as well. For example, Clay Spinuzzi’s influential work has gradually expanded the frame beyond the organization to more flexible and temporary alliances. In Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design (Spinuzzi, 2003) and its more applied follow-on volume, Topsight: A Guide to Studying, Diagnosing, and Fixing Information Flow in Organizations (Spinuzzi, 2013), Spinuzzi focused primarily on communication networks and conventions within organizations. But, more recently, in All Edge: Inside the New Workplace Networks (Spinuzzi, 2015), Spinuzzi broadens his focus beyond the organization, ironically by looking at something smaller: the projectbased team. In other words, Spinuzzi’s work seems to have begun with assuming the organization as the proper unit of study but has shifted to consider more contingent and nimble arrangements that cross-organizational boundaries. Of course, the organization is still an important unit of scope. Yet the organizational assumption obscures a larger view of the technical communication performed by millions of people each day on their own, working outside of, between, and even counter to organizations. This kind of technical communication existed long before the organizational assumption, but it has grown tremendously with the opportunities afforded by the Internet for people to share technical information for their own purposes, rather than on behalf of institutions. In effect, everyone who enjoys access to the Internet is now a potential technical communicator, sharing what they know about technology with the entire world. With services like YouTube, Instructables, and web forums, anyone with only a small investment in money or technology can share with users across the world the kind of information that has traditionally been the product of professional technical writers employed by corporations or government agencies. (For a more detailed discussion of this trend, please see Kimball, 2016.) These new technical communicators find a ready audience in the many people interested in knowing “how to do” something, but not “how to become” something. Examples abound, but here’s a personal one. The bearings of our washing machine burned out. As it loudly tried to shake itself apart, my wife and I cast about for what to do. In previous decades, our options would have been slim. We could take the machine apart and try to diagnose and repair the problem ourselves. Naturally, our ignorance made us reluctant to take that route. We could hire a repairperson, but likely at great expense. We could simply buy a new washer, at even greater expense. Finally, we could seek formal training and become appliance repairpersons. However, such training is difficult to come by, even more costly, and slow. We would likely run out of clean clothes before we learned enough to fix the machine. And, ironically, we would likely have to learn a lot of information about fixing other kinds of machines, as well as the professional values and standards that would allow us to participate