It shows how a better understanding of the contribution that
communities, organizations, and institutions make to learning,
working and innovating can lead to the richest possible use of
technology in our work and everyday lives.
To see the future we can build with information technology, we must
look beyond mere information to the social context that creates and
gives meaning to it.For years pundits have predicted that
information technology will obliterate the need for almost
everything--from travel to supermarkets to business organizations
to social life itself. Individual users, however, tend to be more
skeptical. Beaten down by info-glut and exasperated by computer
systems fraught with software crashes, viruses, and unintelligible
error messages, they find it hard to get a fix on the true
potential of the digital revolution.John Seely Brown and Paul
Duguid help us to see through frenzied visions of the future to the
real forces for change in society. They argue that the gap between
digerati hype and end-user gloom is largely due to the "tunnel
vision" that information-driven technologies breed. We've
become so focused on where we think we ought to be--a place where
technology empowers individuals and obliterates social
organizations--that we often fail to see where we're really
going and what's helping us get there. We need, they argue, to
look beyond our obsession with information and individuals to
include the critical social networks of which these are always a
part.Drawing from rich learning experiences at Xerox PARC, from
examples such as IBM, Chiat/Day Advertising, and California's
"Virtual University," and from historical, social, and
cultural research, the authors sharply challenge the futurists'
sweeping predictions. They explain how many of the tools, jobs, and
organizations seemingly targeted for future extinction in fact
provide useful social resources that people will fight to keep.
Rather than aiming technological bullets at these
"relics," we should instead look for ways that the new
world of bits can learn from and complement them. Arguing elegantly
for the important role that human sociability plays, even--perhaps
especially--in the world of bits, The Social Life of Information
gives us an optimistic look beyond the simplicities of information
and individuals. It shows how a better understanding of the
contribution that communities, organizations, and institutions make
to learning, working and innovating can lead to the richest
possible use of technology in our work and everyday lives.
Table of contents:
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Tunneling Ahead1. Limits to
Information2. Agents and Angels3. Home Alone4. Practice Makes
Process5. Learning--in Theory and in Practice6. Innovating
Organization, Husbanding Knowledge7. Reading the Background8.
Re-educationAfterword: Beyond
InformationNotesBibliographyIndexAbout the Authors
