Just finished watching a Discovery Channel documentary about the role of engineering in Formula 1 motor racing, and particularly the degree of driving automation that is possible.
For the pat 15 years, the sport has operated under arbitrary restrictions on driving automation. Previously, vehicles with features like “launch control” and automated gear changing dominated. It became clear to both fans and critics of the sport that human pilots were rapidly becoming the weak link.
The same trend continued in aviation. Both civil and military aircraft now operate for large parts of the flight cycle under full or partial automation. Increasingly that includes actual combat operations of military aircraft. Decision making has not been delegated to software, it’s just that implementing complex, multi-faceted task can be performed perfectly every time in a crisis. The actions may be based on “best practice” that has been developed and refined over many years, by leading experts.
A recurring thought during the program was “do technical writers have a role in this future?”. Thinking about the end-user experience, the need for documentation evaporates as systems become more intelligent and take over the operation of routine activities. Even the need for tech-savvy engineering writers diminishes when the engineers start using content management, collaboration and self-documenting strategies.
Take the mobile phone “voice calling feature”. Currently I need to read the guide to understand how to enable the feature. But in terms of talking to the phone, I don’t need instructions any more than I do to carry out a conversation.
When the silly and cumbersome setup procedures are ironed out of systems, the role of technical writing seems pretty minimal to me. Remember the early days of VCRs, which had absurdly non-intuitive controls? To a certain extent engineers learned from those mistakes, but much high-end entertainment gear these days can connect to a time server, or at least remember time and date for the life of the device. You just don’t see boxes with a flashing “12:00:00: clock very often these days.
The necessity of consumers to undertake silly, inconvenient procedures is surely diminishing. Business software still lags – just look at clunky ERP user interfaces. But the skills already exist for enabling machines to eliminate process complexity. It’s just a matter of time before they are applied to more and more systems in our work and private lives.
"Expert system" was a buzz word in the early 90s, but maybe now its time has come. As system intelligence increases, many user interfaces will simply disappear.
If your livelihood depends largely on pressing Alt-Print Screen, now is probably a good time to consider retraining
