To understand Pirsig, one must first understand Zen and why the title is Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Everything and everyone has a Buddha nature within Zen. Therefore, it is easy for Pirsig to see the Buddha resting in a computer or cycle as easily as the Buddha rests on a mountain or in the petals of a flower. It is all about the relationship. The nature of the machine does not reside outside of the nature of the man. Thus, in technical writing, we must take into account the relationship of the one the writing is meant for to the thing the writing is written about.
Technical writing is an art form that is just coming into its own. Where journalism and copy writing assume a general audience technical writing is directed towards a very specific target audience, the audience who encounters the technology for which the piece is written. To demean the relationship of the machine to the man is to demean the man. It is very important for the technical writer to know and understand the audience for which they are writing. They need to create a persona (narrative voice) that is not offensive; a nanve user on manual page 2 is transformed or enlightened by the very act of reading, into a sophisticated 'chooser' knowledgeable enough to make a choice decision among options listed on page 35 or beyond.
In Pirsig's world, there are basically two types of people: romantics and classics. To Pirsig, a romantic is one of those who is more impressed with the way the muffler pipes on the bike blend 'sthetically into the whole look on his Indian rather than the torque in the horsepower of the engine. The Classicist, however, sees the biology of the bike, and understands the engine from the inside outward.
Best put, technology should be considered as a part of nature's psychic framework such as that appearing in the Japanese Tea ceremony. Daisetz Suzuki puts it best:
The tea-drinking that is known as cha-no-yu in Japa...