Technical writing, the job which I have performed over the last 30 years, has a core skill. Taking complex information, for instance about a software platform, and writing clear and concise instructions for the customer on how to use it, is a core objective.
Software developers, with all due respect, produce code. While they can write documentation, their perspective is necessarily a coding one. The customer does not want coding lessons, they want to use the software to achieve their goals.
This is where the technical writer steps in, and extracts information from software developers, project managers and subject matter experts. Collecting and translating all this information into instructional material is the key objective of the technical writer. What am I leading up to?
Social skills are just as important as writing and communication skills for a technical writer. We have to deal with people; managers, office staff, software geeks, hardware engineers, salespeople – all can be stakeholders in a project. As a technical writer, it is our job to interview people for their expertise. Does a technical writer know everything about obscure and complex topics? Of course not.
Now that I am over 50, and have a resume as lengthy as War and Peace, there are skills which I have not included on my resume. One of those topics is emotional intelligence.
I have gone through all the stresses and storms of project delivery, attended thousands of hours of meetings, delivered training courses, handled people’s personal problems, been in companies that have fallen into bankruptcy and receivership, trained up new staff, and dealt with all sorts of sociopathic personalities in the workplace.
I worked for a company that produced geographic information systems (GIS). Think Google Maps, and you get the idea. There was a team of developers, headed by a senior software engineer. This person was older than me – at the time I was in my mid-twenties, and they were in their mid-forties. They had a reputation of being cranky, cantankerous and difficult to work with.
This person, whom I will call ‘Joe’ (not their real name) could be positively obnoxious to the junior developers and business analysts. I had to approach Joe, and set up a cordial working relationship that them – after all, they were the senior subject matter experts on the GIS platform I was documenting.
How to solve this problem?
I waited until Joe was in a good mood (or at least, not cranky), and approached him after work. I patiently explained my job requirements, and said that I never treat anyone as an ‘enemy’, but as a collaborator on a project. I would require the benefit of his expertise, because clear documentation for the customer reduced the amount of unnecessary support calls and burden on the developers.
From that day onwards, Joe was polite and cooperative with me. He never raised his voice, and was always willing to answer my questions. He was still obnoxious to his staff.
Many months later, I learned the reason for his behaviour; he saw that the junior developers did not possess the basic skill set he expected of graduates in computer programming. His frustration with their apparent lack of basic knowledge would boil over in the workplace.
Years later, after I had finished on that project and moved on to other jobs, I was sitting in the food court when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and was pleasantly surprised – it was Joe saying hello. Here was this grumpy, cranky person standing there being friendly to me. I do not know what happened to Joe after that, but I hope he is okay.
What is my point? AI cannot read the room. Yes, it is wonderful technology, but it cannot replace the social skill capital accumulated over years of experience.
Reading the room, and navigating the intricacies of social interactions is a skill developed over time. Lived experience is not something you can describe to AI. Oh yes, I can see numerous copywriting jobs which involve creating text for AI engines, which is basically a method of getting writers to train their automated replacements.
Synthetic intelligence, which is what AI has achieved, prompts us to revisit debates about self-awareness and consciousness. These topics are nothing new. We all know that good ol’ Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650), preeminent philosopher, scientist and mathematician created the famous statement ‘I think, therefore I am’.
That is all well and good, however, he was not the first to explore the topic of human self-awareness. Centuries before him, Islamic scientist, philosopher and polymath Ibn Sina (westernised as Avicenna 980 – 1037), theorised the flying man thought experiment.
Let’s suppose that god (the monotheistic one, not the hundreds of other creator deities), created a man instantaneously. This man has no memories or experiences. His limbs are outstretched, so he cannot feel his own body with his hands. His eyes are covered, his hearing is blocked, and he is floating in mid-air. Would he be conscious of himself? Avicenna said yes. He was working towards a solution for what we today call the mind-body problem.
The world of social experience cannot be replicated or replaced by AI. The latter certainly helps with monotonous tasks, alleviating the drudgery of IT. However, AI is not a project manager, or a socially skilled entity, capable of bringing multiple stakeholders together for a common project.
Indeed, we are now, in the era of Big Tech, dominated by an attentional oligarchy. Our attention spans have been commoditised by the tech giants. Our banking, health data, romantic searches, political questions, music preferences – are all part and parcel of big data. Surveillance capitalism is a marketing panopticon which monitors our tastes and habits, and converts them into corporate profitability.
Now, the big tech corporations want permission to sell and trade your data.
My question for you is; why are we allowing the billionaires to decide what makes us human? Surely our common humanity is something worth fighting for?