Open source economics

In this video, Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. Is he right? Could the same economic rules be applied to the technical writing projects, where there is a large user base?

How will the Semantic Web affect user documentation?

Tim Berners-Lee said, in 1999: I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of… Read more »

Twitter revisited

Here is graph comparing the use of words in Twitter that are commonly associated with the field of technical communication.

Is Twitter a useful tool for technical authors?

A lot of people I know, it seems, are talking about Twitter. Quite a lot of these discussions seem to revolve around the question: is it actually useful? At the moment, I’m not sure myself. I’m asking myself whether it’s a useful tool for technical authors. So what is Twitter? Twitter describes itself as a… Read more »