Blog Posting #6. Social Nature of Technical Communication

The paper discusses the difficulty that  Barry Marshall faced to convince his colleagues the validity of his work. The paper analyzes the role of persuasion in scientific communication. It clearly states that the reason why his theory was not readily accepted is the lack of persuasion in communication. The paper also discusses the wrong ways that Dr. Marshall tried to persuade his colleagues-by drinking a mixture of the bacteria. In science, there is a presence of prevailing assumptions. Effective persuasion can be used to change this. Persuasion is generated by the presentation and style of the communication. Computer science is just another field that focuses on collaboration and communication. For example, most project ideas require some amount of persuasion to be first recognized. In the context of this class, we were asked to send a persuasive email to get the project that most of the team members were comfortable with. Now, the project is being implemented through collaboration. Every project, every task is a product of collaboration in the computer science field. By describing the readers' initial attitude and what it should be after reading our communication can determine the level of persuasiveness in the communication. It is important to find out the rationales the readers' will find persuasive.