Kimball, M. A. (2017). Tactical technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 26(1), (pp. 1–7). https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2017.1259428

In Miles A. Kimball’s (2017) article “Tactical Technical Communication,” he indicated that “technical communication existed long before the organizational assumption, but it has grown tremendously with the opportunities afforded by the Internet for people to share technical information for their own purposes, rather than on behalf of institutions” (p. 1). Kimball displayed how users become “temporary, limited-scope experts” by sharing a personal story about fixing a washing machine, the freedom of the user to share how something actually works rather than how it should work, the power of using the internet for radical sharing, examining the holes within de Certeau’s theory that seems to unethically promote deviance, and not shying away from the negative aspects of radical sharing (p. 2). Kimball’s purpose was to illustrate why society doesn’t need to shy away from the ugly parts of technical communication, but rather recognize that it “is a deeper river than most people think. We need to understand it from its surface to its depths” (p. 6). Kimball’s intended audience was individuals with the perception that technical communication relates only to institutions and searching for insight about the communal abilities of the internet. Kimball summarized other theories and his previously written article “Cars, Culture, and Tactical Technical Communication,” but he didn’t really present any new concepts just new ways of looking at the consumer’s use technology.