My thoughts of our "Ethics" textbook, chapter 5; "
Challenger Disaster: Information versus Meaning"--
The federal investigations about the 'why' of the
Challenger tragedy nearly 2 decades ago, showed how vital technical communications needs to have clarity as well as how the society at-large shapes or forms communications of all kinds.
And then, there was the comments and interpretations of those 2 investigations reports!
Values, whether they be of a technical nature or philosophical one, are
the foundation of of all technical communications. Either technical documents carry out ethic responsiblity of the technical writer or they don't.
Its very interesting to me, that in this chapter, Mr. Dombrowski actually refers to himself, in the 1st person (pages 122 & 123).
Why did Volumes II through V of the Presential investigation report [to be known as the Rogers Commission report, in the blog--RCr] contain
only appendices of Volume I? From what Mr. Dombrowski has written on the RCr, there was very little genuine factual information the shuttle's explosion: very weak in the relevancy department! I understand that what was discovered was "pumped up" in its proportion--what was minor was given prominence.
I feel the need to create a poster from the following quote, from Mr. Dombrowski:
"A careful writer should select from the wealth of data available, highlighting things that are most important and downplaying if not excluding things that are relatively unimportant; this is what the reader expects of the writer, too."
I love that statement and I personally want to live/write in that manner, of course, only in my academic and future work-related writing.
Good grief! On page 126, under the sub-heading of "Cofusing Language", Mr. D. [as I will refer to him, from now on. in this blog] cites 3 examples {actually one page within the Volume V of RCr} of this crazy document! This writing makes me wonder: were the writers on some hallucingenic substance? It seems no one could figure which direction to go, so it went everywhere.
I'm pleasently surprised by how Mr. D. used a personal example in his life, of the difference between personal procedural decision-making.
The Congressional report of the investigation seemed to have better clarity than the RCr and it was quite alot less vague.
At about the beginning of the section entitled, "Two Crucial Shifts in Meaning", I realized I had not
really paid much attention to the news media analyses of this whole event, especially regardingthe explanation of those now-infamous O-rings. Until I read this particular chapter in our Ehtics textbook, I didn't give that specific tragedy much thought!
Why didn't any one question thre generalized belief that "what went up" and "what came down"were one and the same? These O-rings were charred; not all the way through, but enough to ask, "why only the one O-ring? " as well as "what is the cause of the charring?"
Technical writers communicate not only data and facts, but additionally, what those facts
mean. This makes sense to me.
'Social forces', such as economic boundaries, design simplicity, parts availability, and others I'm sure, are real and important thus they all influence both the technical writer and the audience involved. In this specific case, whether these influnces were proper or/and excusable isn't the point, but rather these 'forces' changes the writers involved, unbeknownst to these writers.
Regarding that last meeting of the managers and engineers, before the actual launch, they had decided to ignore/disregard those who were in direct contact with those O-rings and other equipment.
Note to self: always have a commonsensical and independent mind!
About the audience any technical document is aimed toward: always side toward a degree of pessimism,meaning don't expect all audiences to be reasonable.
In conclusion, {finally she is nearly done!!}, there are so many lessons to learned, sadly though, from other's mistakes.
