Hallenbeck, S. (2012). User agency, technical communication, and the 19th-century woman bicyclist. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21(4), (pp. 290–306). https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2012.686846

In Sarah Hallenbeck’s (2012) article “User Agency, Technical Communication, and the 19^th-Century Woman Bicyclist,” she argued “that technical communicators, in their teaching and research, should consider the role that extraorganizational technical communication plays in generating vital and lasting cultural changes” (p. 290). Hallenbeck assessed three texts and how they portrayed female users of the bicycle, gender and technology, the agency of the bicycle user, the different types of riders, and the transformative powers of the activity for women. Hallenbeck’s purpose was to establish the “need to undertake additional robust studies of user cultures, attending not only to innovative technological practices but also to user innovation and expertise as communicated through writing for purposes of promoting lasting cultural change” (p. 305). Hallenbeck’s intended audience was historical scholars studying the innovations of past technologies and professors seeking to broaden their teachings of cultural transformations. Hallenbeck did an excellent job of comparing three different bicycle manufacturing manuals and using their distinctions to support her argument.