Opining About My Future

Posted December 8, 2008 in Blog by Tieson

I was recently asked this question by my Technical Writing instructor to think about as part of our final exam and I thought you might enjoy my response:

Final Exam Question: What field(s) will my chosen field have to interact with using technical documents, and how? Think about 10 - 15 years from now.

My chosen field? Software engineering. What fields will I have to interact with? Ha. A list of fields I won't interact with would probably be much shorter. It would seem at first glance that nearly every field interacts with software in one fashion or another, from the attorney using a catalog system to research relevant prior cases to the zoologist using a productivity suite to publish the results of his latest study. Students and scientists use web browsers and search engines to gather information for their studies. Businesses use web services to communicate sales data to central offices. Defense agencies use GPS and satellite telemetry to coordinate tactical exercises. These, and many others, are all examples of people using technology in one fashion or another, and each of these technologies is driven by software, be it embedded in logic controllers or executed from within an operating system.

All of this technology requires documentation to develop the software, to train users of the software, and to help other developers maintain the software. There are entire industries devoted to nothing more than helping businesses properly develop software, or teaching new users how to use such things as the Windows operating system, the Microsoft Office suite, or the various parts of Adobe's Creative Suite.

This trend to bound to continue well into the future, since more and more of our everyday activities are based around the technology that has so pervaded our lives.

Updated: December 8, 2008 Back to top