Orr, Julian. in Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithica, NY: ILR Press.

This section is about the ways technicians talk about machines.

Increasing specificity of context seems to increase enthusiasm of technician's discussion. Specific machines become individuals. The machines are known by their social situations.

"It is in terms of these machines that the technician's construct their own selves, both hero and fool, both in pride in coping with this perversity and keeping control of the situation and in humility in acknowledging their lesser failures, while praying never to have a situation that simply cannot be handled."

There is another chapter on service documentation. Directive documentation belongs to the scientific management tradition of attempting to rationalize the work process.