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Technical Communication and the World Wide Web. Eds. Carol Lipson and Michael Day. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005.
DOI: 10.1177/1050651905284411
Reviewed by Amanda Metz Berner
Iowa State University
Technical Communication and the World Wide Web is a broad title, and thus this edited collection of essays appropriately encompasses a broad range of topics associated with technical communication and the Internet. More specifically, discussions in this text elaborate several ways pedagogical views should change to better approach technical communication's relationship with new and constantly changing technology. Editors Lipson and Day propose three foci for curricular changes caused by and relating to (a) the information architecture and database requirements of the Internet, (b) the Internet's complex legal copyright situation, and (c) the global nature of the Internet (p. 13). In addition, a few chapters specifically address implications for introductory and online technical communication classes. Chapters included in the text effectively address issues and implications "from the community college level to the graduate level, from service courses to degree programs" (p. 14) through both specific suggestions and broader discussions of pedagogical implications.
The need for this collection of essays is discussed by Rice and Papper, who provide several ways that pedagogical changes are absolutely necessary for students' future workplace success: Their argument will convince readers that the changes addressed by other authors in the book are worth careful consideration. In this spirit, Rice and Papper's essay may be better placed at the beginning of the text rather than toward the end. Nonetheless, in chapter 14, they vigorously advocate that with the Web's integration into their lives, technical communicators must be able to communicate in all formats and understand how these formats work together. To make their point, Rice and Papper invoke Kress's (1998) "Visual and Verbal Modes of Representation in Electronically Mediated Communication: The Potentials of New Forms of Text." They remind readers once again that the medium is the message. The mode we use to communicate our messages affects the way readers interpret messages. For example, individuals reading an article in a newspaper will read that article differently from the way they would read it on a Web site. They may skim an online text more than a print text. Therefore, given the Web's integration into...