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Nostradamus the technical writer
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the technical writer
Nostradamus the technical writer
by Geoff Hart
Previously published as: Hart, G.J. 2002. Nostradamus
the technical writer. http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/magazine/humor/nostradamus.html
Sue Gallagher, a longtime technical writer, once
posed the following riddle: "How are science
fiction writers like technical writers?” The
answer, of course, is that both professions write
about things we imagine will happen in the future,
but that often don’t—as anyone who’s
documented software or hardware for a startup company
can confirm. With the new millennium arriving at the
end of 2001, I find my thoughts turning to a different
form of science fiction: eschatology, the
art of predicting the future. It occurs to me that
the role of technical writer as prognosticator has
a proud history, and one that dates back to the days
of Nostradamus the Prophet, one of the most famous
eschatologists.
Nostradamus a technical writer? Surely I jest?
Nope. There are so many parallels it’s a wonder
nobody ever commented on this similarity before. For
example, lacking clear or definitive product specifications
(in Michel de Nostradame’s case, for the future)
or access to the designer (okay... the Designer),
he still managed to phrase things so clearly—yet
so obscurely—that his user manuals for the coming
years could be cheerfully interpreted in any way that
worked for the reader. Would that we could be consistently
that good in our usual work!
As well, Michel wrote in French, thereby encountering
the same localization problems many of us now face,
including the risk of losing something in translation.
A few choice examples:
- “Alone at night in secret study, placed on
the brass tripod, light flame emerges from the emptiness”:
Replace “brass” with “silicon” and
you have the technical writer on deadline,
chained to a PC, with the screen illuminating the
sleepless darkness throughout the night.
- “A long, drawn-out fight [in which] the countryside
will be grievously troubled”: Microsoft versus
the U.S. Department of Justice over perceived
monopolistic practices.
- “A treacherous man, quickly raised from low
to high estate, rules briefly but suddenly turns disloyal
and volatile”: The dramatic reversal of fortune
for inexperienced owners of dot-com empires
who watched helplessly as paper fortunes vanished
overnight.
- “The enslaved populace sings, chants, and
demands, while Princes and Lords are held captive”:
The ascent of Windows, which has imprisoned
computer support staff in their offices as they strive
in vain to keep our computers and networks running.
- “The clergy will be both exalted and reviled
by those who wish to learn nothing”: If we’re
the ones who interpret the scriptures for the developers
(the “high priests of technology”), then
this neatly describes the readers who would
rather just use the darned product than deal with
our documentation.
- “For 40 years the rainbow will not be seen
[then] it will be seen everyday”: Given that
dates and times were always somewhat vague
in older writing, 40 years could easily be an exaggeration
of 4 years; in that context, the resurgence
of Apple, whose colorful logo uses the image of the
rainbow, is clearly predicted: the company once seemed
on the point of vanishing, but is now seen everywhere.
- “A thing existing without any sense[s] will
bring about its own end”: Computer software
that self-destructs daily or is brought low by viruses.
Bonus alternative explanation: Microsoft retires the
much-reviled Clippy the Paperclip from MS Office’s
online help, a few years after discontinuing
Microsoft Bob, having failed to recognize that such
ill-considered efforts inevitably bring about their
own demise.
- “The fish that travels over both land and
sea is cast up onto the shore by a great wave”:
Microsoft trying to rule both the desktop
and portable devices via Windows will prove to be
an exercise in futility.
- “After twenty years of the Moon's reign have
passed, another will take up his reign for 7000 years,
when the exhausted Sun takes up his cycle”:
Nearly 20 years after the advent of MS-DOS
and Windows, will Sun finally use Java or Linux to
knock off Microsoft? [A look back from 2005: That
should, of course, be Solaris,
not Linux.—GH]
- “Great changes will occur, dreadful horrors
and vengeances, for as the moon is led by its angel,
the heavens draw near to the Balance”: The
eternal struggle of the technical writer against
last-minute software changes as we approach the shipping
deadline.
- “…A man called by a barbaric name...
will speak to a great people in words and deeds, and
will have more fame and renown than any other man”:
Who else could this refer to but Bill “barbarians
at the” Gates?
All this being said, the skeptic might suggest
that Nostradamus was really practicing escatology,
not eschatology, and that this simple typo
is more than a coincidence. Considerable credibility
is given to this hypothesis by the fact that writers
were considerably sloppier about spelling in the
good ol' days before spell checkers, so perhaps Nostradamus
was really writing for Intercom’s
Witful Thinking column and his irony simply escaped
the notice of his contemporaries. Me? I’m too
skeptical to think he was serious. As the bank manager
robbed by a tarot-reading employee was later heard
to complain, “I
shoulda known: never trust an eschatologist
to be your fortune's teller.”
©2004–2024 Geoffrey Hart. All rights reserved.