I don’t own a car. And I haven’t since I gave mine to my parents over seven years ago. That perplexes a number people I know, many of whom can’t get along without their four-wheeled metal boxes.
While I am member of a local car sharing service, most of my travel through the city is done on foot, by bicycle (I own a really nifty folding model in case you’re wondering), or by public transit. For all it’s flaws and all the complaints, Toronto’s transit system isn’t too bad. Not the best I’ve used, but not too bad.
Watching my fellow riders is an interesting exercise in observing human behaviour. I won’t go into too many details — I’ve ranted and joked about that elsewhere. Let’s just say that for the most part I don’t have a very high opinion of people who ride transit in Toronto. They seem to turn their brains off and be oblivious to their surroundings; I have several bumps and bruises to prove that!
But watching many riders is also a good case study in how people use (or don’t use) documentation.
Let me explain …
I view documentation as serving three main purposes:
Last week, I joined a very interesting webcast (organized by the folks at 
Recently, a friend forwarded me an interesting blog post. It’s from popular blog on language learning, and the post in question examines the paralysis that comes from 
There’s definitely a lot of talk about the mobile universe in our profession. More and more technical communicators are coming to realize that the devices that we carry in our hands and in our bags are becoming a platform on which to deliver information and documentation.