Brown, John Seely., and Paul Duguid. The Social Life of Information. Boston: Harvard Business School, 2002. Print.
A Review of The Social Life of Information‘s Preface, Introduction and Chapter 1 : Limits to Information
By Renee Ellen Lindhorst
Introduction to Notes:
Brown and Duguid dramatically appeal to their audience’s sense of logos by showing us what is occurring during the information and technological revolution. The two revolutions affect several aspects of our society i.e. government, businesses, states, social conceptions, how we treat each other, the economy and much more.
I would even say they appeal our sense of ethos and pathos too as all of these things affect our lives directly in many ways. So I’ve included some personal perspective to show you how this text has affected me and the questions that have emerged because of it.
Reflections and Concepts:
A weight lifted off my shoulders when I began to understand what Brown and Duguid were trying to do because I often felt so confused about what was happening to businesses, the job market, and where I will fit in as a professional writer. They didn’t answer these questions for me but they gave me a better idea of what was happening and how else I can be competitive.
There are major changes that are happening in our economy, in our social conceptions, and how technology plays a huge part in these changes — so do people and the way they think.– It’s a technological revolution.
The industrial revolution is the only model for the information revolution. It’s how we can measure what is occurring. (15)
During the industrial revolution people learned how to process, sort, rearrange, recombine and transport. We built on older models during this time. But that is not exactly occuring with our technological revolution.
To compare the two revolutions you have to look at the information that is received. During the Industrial Revolution we received information in terms of tangible items, trains, buildings, the railroad, buses ect…
Now during our Information revolution we receive information in terms of stories, diagrams, documents and narratives as KNOWLEDGE and MEANING. (16)
*New technology overshadows social needs but better technologies emerge because of social needs.
How it overshadows:
Technology has replaced the handshakes, looking eachother in the eyes, hugs, dinners and so on.
Notice how we REPLACE. Replacing is redundant and wasteful.
How it emerges:
When there is an emergency, like a message that needs to be sent right away, this encourages designers to make technologies faster, bigger and what have you.
When a business person needs to meet with someone in another state, but there is no way to reach them in time– this encourages organizations to invest in designing technology that will accommodate that social need.
One of the surprising components of this text was their numerous mentions of futurology and predictions. The authors say that it is always easier to predict than to build because people underestimate what people will actually do. (Preface)
PREDICTIONS
– WIRE Magazine predicted that, “Agents will become economic decision makers in their own right to produce wholesale changes in capitalism.”
– Bill Joy, a writer for WIRE magazine and computer scientist, argued that autonomous technology will wipe out humanity instead of giving it a wonderful future. He saw humanity and bots on a collision course. (XII)
WIRE kinda fired back at Joy because they saw bots and humanity headed toward the same direction. Bots and people seemed to compliment each other and make up where the other lacks. (XII)
They also make the point that the complementarity of bots and humans emphasize a point of technological innovation.
Question: Why do pundits talk in terms of replacement? Isn’t that redundant?
Since pundits think in terms of replacement of technological inventions, they are basically wasting millions/billions of dollars because they could be building technologies off of old technologies. They could do something like the Linux project where the software was open to the public to improve it bit by bit.
Redefinition leads to standardization. Standardization erases differences.
Question: What does he mean bots are impressive at identifying people as one certain type? What does he mean by that and how is that possible?
Another punditry prediction is that information technology will free us all from the constraints of the industrial society.
I have a problem with this because during that revolution, a lot of people were working. During this revolution, a lot of people are not working.
Another point the authors make is that people identify others as individuals and deal with them in contexts.
They use the term contexts to describe complex, highly situated fors of interaction that computers are unable to replicate.
Replacement thinking is not the way to go. Brown and Duguid are calling for people to adopt new thinking in terms of augmentation/augmenting.
Some of the shocking facts of our technological and information revolution are the following:
—–We produce two exabytes of new digital information a year. That’s too much. What are we doing with it? We are forgetting social interactions, social needs, social relationships.
——Information production is growing by 50% a year which means people are being remarkably productive. BUT SHOCKINGLY consuming is growing by 1.7% a year.
This basically means that supply and demand are no longer parallel to each other.
There is no longer an equilibrium. It’s CHAOS.
Somehow Brown and Duguid find that this imbalance resembles a large central problem of knowledge management in organizations. (XIII)
Question: Why does Brown and Duguid call it knowledge management and not information management? What’s their definitions for knowledge and information? How are they different?
AT THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
–The imbalance of a ton of information means that VOLUME has taken priority over VALUE.
—Issues with meaning, judgement, sense making, context and interpretation.
(All of these are components of communication and writing. We need more writers, purposes for writers, organizations that see our significance)
—- Another problem: While celebrating access to information, pundits undervalue the power of the technology to create and deploy social network. They ignore the fact that technology can help satisfy our social needs. For example, RFCs are just a simple page that requests for comments. But that little pages opens up HUGE discussions. (XVII)
—-Designs that ignore social issues lead to fragile opaque technologies (XVIII)
—- Self organization and formal organization live in tension with each other.
—Tunnel Design Technologies (Edward Tenner Concept) which are technologies that create as many problems as they solve. (3)
It’s like a vacuum software. hahha
—Under tunnel design technology problems lie unintended consequences of design Tenner describes that makes new technologies so frustrating aside from neglecting resources that lie outside the focus of information. (3)
And the paradox is that tunnel desifn often takes aim at the surface of life. (4)
— we all do not seem to understand that WE ARE ALL DESIGNERS and it is very important to know our limitations. We have to know where to look for resources when we need them. (4)
—- Attending too closely to information overlooks the social context that helps people understand what that information might mean and why it matters. (5)
Question: What is the disaggregation of knowledge into data? (12)
The disaggregation of knowledge into data is called datafication.
What’s the difference between their concepts of first, second, and third waves?
The technological revolution doesn’t encourage complacency but rather leaves people isolated and confused. So they really do not know what to do with themselves because they don’t understand their surroundings. (12-13)
So when there is a problem with information, we don’t actually fix the problem. We kind of cover it up with more information. So if a button is not working on your web page, you create a help button, but if that button is not working, you create another button. So we create MORE information to solve our problems with information/technology/data. (14)
Key Concept
Moore’s Law– When information burdens start to loom, responses fall into a category of Moore’s Law.
– Gordon Moore is cofounder of the chip making intel.
– Moore predicted computer power available on a chip would approximately double every eighteen months.
So whenever we buy a new computer, we know in a year or so it will be sold for half the price and they will already have a computer that is faster/better.
This is another example of how we just build on top of stuff, fix things in a way that’s not really beneficial to our environment. (14)
We are encouraged to embrace dumb power. (15)
SOLUTIONS
Plead for a design that takes into account resources that people care about. Such design produces tools that people care about.
Conclusive thoughts on this chapter:
I learned a lot about the differences of the revolutions. There is some funny stuff going on with the overload of information that we have and what is going to be done with it. We’ll constantly be uploading and googling for information, but until the organizations and businesses turn flat, release their crazed obsessions with control, I rarely see glimpses of humanity in technology.
It’s the collaborative writing, the narratives, the things that pundits say will go obsolete are the resources that I think Brown and Duguid are speaking of.
Connecting with one another and using each other as resources and building relationships through technology is a good idea.
