#futureresearch

Clearly written for a niche readership of college-level technical writing teachers, the significance of the research tools presented and the timeliness of the subject matter make it worth consideration by other instructors, such as those teaching advanced writing courses in digital rhetoric topics or in related digital humanities courses. What I find invaluable is how this research established the relevance of writing research to other disciplines, such as computer science, marketing, and architecture, to name just a few. Liza Potts' (2014) research and  suggested new directions for social media research present the promise of a field that is no longer risky, but necessary. Potts (2014) demonstrated how social media research findings can be generalizable across networks and scenarios, but to do this work, she encouraged “Collaborations across the sciences and the humanities, as one can engineer the artificial and the other can contextualize the intelligence” (p. 41). Surely, the best possible outcome in any disaster scenario can be made better with collaboration, and we can build better communication networks, ones that give greater agency to laypeople and  across massive networks to encourage greater cooperation in times of crisis. Hence, the intention she stated is ideal; it seeks to be interdisciplinary, and although unstated, undoubtedly relevant to current conversations happening in the technical writing community about how the field might assert its value to other disciplines. Her contribution to technical writing is responsive and significant, and I can only hope that more writing teachers and researchers pick up this book and  consider its implications for our teaching and research.