The Social Life of Information

The Social life of Information
 by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, Harvard Business School Press, 2000. ISBN 0875847625

You may wonder why I haven’t given this book four coloured balls. Well, I confess that not everyone will share my tastes. If you don’t like the Internet or technology intimidates you then you may not what to plow through this book. On the other hand if the patterns and connectedness of society and technology intrigue you and you are curious about all sides of potential future concerns, then I can strongly recommend this book.

This is a difficult read on some level. For me it was a natural follow-up to meg Wheatley’s book "Leadership and the New Science". I expected the book to closely address the issue of information and technology in within open systems theory. To be true the book is all about systems, but to my surprise, not once do the authors mention systems theory or concepts directly. The middle bogs down a little for me (Chapter 6) after a great discussion on information, knowledge and learning but picks up again in Chapter 7: Reading the Background. Unfortunately, the ending seems a little flat as well.

Here are a few sample gems:

• Futurology is littered wit the obituaries of tools that nonetheless continue a robust and healthy life. One of our own favorite examples is the hinge. This seems to be written out of every futuristic movie in for of the sliding door; yet, it not only hangs on bit is vital to many laptops and cell phones.
• In an exemplary piece of partial blindness, for example, British Telecom did notice the damaging isolation of its home workers. As a remedy, however, it decided to pit the sound of canned background chatter into their home offices.
• For example, people who are judged unfit to learn to operate simple tools or who fail to master domestic appliances nevertheless learn to operate complex machines that present users with hazardous, changing environments and sophisticated technologies. We refer, of course, to the care. . .The car and the VCR make an interesting contrast. Almost everyone in our society who learns to drive has already spent a great deal of time traveling in cars or buses, along road and highways. New drivers begin formal instruction with an implicitly structured, social understanding of the task. Now consider the VCR. Most people can use their machine to play tapes. What they find difficult is recording, though that is not a much more complex task. The central distinction between these two functions is that one is often a social act, the other highly individual. You might invite a group over to watch a movie. You are unlikely to invite on over to watch you record.
• Books have been so well socialized that people barely even think of them as technology.

This is not a must have on the bookshelf but I am glad that I read it. This is a very important subject that the authors readily admit has no answers let alone easy ones. By their own admission, the 252 pages barely scratch the surface and still manage to contain many ideas for further speculation and analysis.

RFH (00/08)

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