Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

Mr. Mubarak is updating his resume. After 30 years in power, he was fired after 17 days of massive protests in Egypy. Apparently, his end users weren't too happy with how he ran the country.

The populace is celebrating the "new Egypt", but this could very well turn out to be the vapourware of the century. The new boss, Omar Suleiman, worked for the old boss, so it's difficult to see how things will actually change. This isn't Egypt 2.0, but more like Egypt 0.0 with some patches.

Moving on to actual software, many technical communicators detest the tools and systems that they work with. It's tempting to simply revolt and dump the current process, replacing it with anything else.

However, any new tool or system must be viewed with its final result in mind. The two primary questions to ask are:

1. Will it improve the quality and efficiency of the information development process?
2. Will it improve the quality of the documentation itself?

If not, then as poor as the current system is, at least it works.

Whether changing a country or a process, we must remember George Orwell. His classic novel Animal Farm wonderfully documents the failure of the Russian revolution. The men represent the brutal Czarist government; the pigs are the communists. The men are overthrown by the pigs, who turn out to be just as brutal.

The final words of Animal Farm are the most haunting:

"No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."