Rating: 
Summary: Debunking the "debunkers"...
Review: In "The Social Life of Information" Brown and Duguid look at knowledge and technology interfaces as much as Tenner's "Why Things Bite Back" looked at the physical relations between the human body and the technological object. In the crosshairs this time we found the myths of the early information technology: electronic cottages, death of the corporation, displacement of newspapers and mass production. After the first chapters make a remarkable job at characterizing the often ignored social and human subtexts of occupational technology Brown and Duguid spend much of the rest of the book debunking other alleged myths of the information society, like the paperless or deskless office. If there is a problem with this exposition, it's this very accentuation of this manichaeistic view of infoenthusiasts versus technoconservatives. Unfortunately the straw man the authors try set up to put on fire, the revolutionary technocrat or infoenthusiast who candidly believe in the IT panacea to organizational and societal problems, is hardly there to be found. What is most appalling to me is why most of this book seems devoted to this simplistic view of technological change. If the presumed antagonists are the techno-hype sheets in the style Wired magazine or some popular media, then it is really hard to take this work seriously. However, the target audience seems to be of the more learned kind, at least from reading the more deeply reasoned chapters. For instance chapter 4 and 6 outline a theory innovation and the role of the corporation as the intercept of communities and networks of practice. Therefore it is difficult to imagine readers accepting the black and white contrast of most of the rest of the book. What the failure of the prediction of paperless office or the anachronistic emergence of the fax machine prove is nothing but the failure of linear thinking in matters of technological development. Anybody can see that there are probably more sailing boats today than before the steam engine was invented, and theatre or opera have hardly been displaced by Cinema, TV or Webcasts. Whom the authors need to confront are not Toffler or even Negroponte but rather Ellison and Raymond whose view is rooted in the very same networks of practice Brown and Duguid spend one of their best chapters on. Because of this black and white perspective, the biggest limit of the book emerges, becoming impossible to reconcile one of the biggest achievements of IT, that is the socio/voluntaristic economy of the Open Source which the authors get rid of using the overused cliché of "gift economy". On the contrary, the phenomenon is highly relevant to the object of the book as it appears to be the perfect integration of IT and social intermediation in a complex assemblage of cooperative egoism. Seely and Brown dismiss this kind of organization as "loosely coupled systems [which c]ollectively, don't take action and produce little knowledge" (p. 142). The one word response to this statement could be, for instance, Linux (but there is a vast repertoire to choose from). These gaps and the general one-sidedness are quite disappointing coming from authors of this caliber, both Brown and Duguid are top researchers at Xerox Parc, and might in part be explained by the apparent genesis of the book as compilation of pre-existing articles which have been assembled an only apparent cutting edge "debunking" perspective (see for instance: http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/members/brown/index.html).
Rating:
Summary: Fun, but no cigar
Review: In reality exists a muddled world, ignoring (at their own risks) the dynamics of how people create ideas, disseminate those ideas, and recreate their own social and business fabrics. In reality, the short sound bite is king, and mapping and leveraging this dynamic is too 'deep' for most. Too bad for the species. Sharing pithy stories of human foibles of this ilk, along with a couple of successes and so-called technical how-to's, is always a nice read for a story in Wired. But very little of this tomb will help leverage the sentiency of the populace. Perhaps the long priestly robes at PARC are hiding something far more dubious than just career paths. I have heard both of these gentlemen speak, and speak well (with pointed antidotes and metaphors) they do. But someone should have given them a reality read, and stopped them from drinking their own kool-aid. I was expecting a whole lot more from both, and was sorely disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Blather by Academic Gearheads
Review: It's hard to fathom how such highly educated individuals, with access to tools, lots of time, and presumably intelligent colleagues, could come up with such a shallow analysis. They are pretty highbrow about it all too. Their storytelling is rehash. You could do better reading any technology business magazine and using your own interpretations of how technology changes will change our behavior. Your guess is probably better than what little you would find here.
Rating: 
Summary: Valuable idea towards the new IT century
Review: Living in this new century, Information Technology plays a very important part in our daily life. However, as the world is flooded with information, meaningless of the mass information become a questionable matter in return. This book is just about some ideas concerning the new technology and the new world information. People nowadays know the importance of information but they always missed the limitation of it. As mentioned by the author, increased in information is not necessary equivalents to increased in the value and meaning of it. Controlling the flow of mass information became a critical issue and solutions like better processing and improved data are suggested for improvement. The book raised an essential element in the IT world, that is the social network, which in fact is playing the core role in this new technology world. Without the help of socialization, technology cannot grow so fast into our daily life. Think about facing problems about how to operate a new version of Microsoft windows, majority of new users would seek advice from those they knew rather than seek helps from the ¡§help¡¨ menu or instruction guidelines on the internet. Therefore, social context plays an important role in helping information and technology become more valuable to human.
It is the truth that even the professional technicians cannot solve problems by themselves sometimes and what they would do is to discuss with colleagues and share experience and knowledge with each other. I agree that information itself has little meaning; it becomes valuable only after we digested and changed them into knowledge. Without doubt, technologies can ease our learning of knowledge and save much time. Therefore, they all have close relationship with each other. This book is worthwhile to read and I have several learning insights from it. For instance, the difference between information and knowledge, IT is not as powerful as what I think before and there are still many rooms for improvements. The author pointed out an important term, Tunnel Vision, which means looking at a particular thing in a narrow vision and ignoring other things around. Whenever we try to focus on a certain issue, we should mind the thing around, broader vision is better to help us in getting a more objective view. In addition, it is informative in clearing our misunderstandings on IT development and there are some good points raised by the author like those I have mentioned before.
Rating: 
Summary: Unique message
Review: One of the best business books of the 1990s. Only now is the message getting heard. Organizations and businesses cannot be programmed like computers. Installing technology has all sorts of complex repercussions for people, processes, & productivity - not all of them good. Makes a good argument that technology does not solve all problems. In fact, I/T creates many new problems when human & social factors are ignored. The latest upgrade is not your savior.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and argued, some parts overtaken by events
Review: Paul Duguid and John Seely Brown talk at length about howcomputer network interactions are embedded in a broader socialcontext, and how the folks who talk about how daily life will be reduced to a stream of interactions with brute machines totally don't get how people figure into the context of these interactions. Some of the chapters are from earlier papers they put together and published on the net, but there's a lot of new materials. A particularly interesting discussion from the authors (Brown is at Xerox Parc, Duguid is a historian at Berkeley) is of Xerox's support system for copier techs called "Eureka". This is kind of like a "frequently asked questions" or "innovative solutions to problems" database, with a couple key human touches that (they claim) cause people who are otherwise busy doing real work to contribute to and update it...
Rating:
Summary: society rules
Review: Products sometimes take off because social groups "provide the resources for their members to learn," the authors of this book write. That explains why people know how to play tapes in their VCRs but can't set the clock on the thing. The first is a social action; the second isn't. For products to succeed it helps to get them out into society. The authors cite the example of Alexander Graham Bell who decided after his investors stopped supporting him that he should "abandon specialists and ... put phones in people's hands." So he got his phones installed in hotels and offices and near luncheon counters. That way, the authors write, "people who didn't know how to use them would be likely to see people who did know how and in this way learn about the phone system." It's getting products into the hands of society that gives them life, and the authors make a compelling case for why this is so and how it's worked time and again in successful companies.
Rating:
Summary: Mandatory for executives of all stripes
Review: Really an excellent collection of essays on information, learning, and knowledge.
The book was released in 2000 and has a refreshingly wise view of "the
information economy", avoiding and almost repudiating hyper-used terms
like "disintermediation", etc. Brown is a well-known scientist at
Xerox PARC, the place where some of the most important innovations in computing
were created (the mouse, the hard drive, GUI interfaces, early ethernet adapters,
and other things PARC brilliantly conceived but forgot to monetize) and has
much to offer us in the way of an anthropologists view of knowledge. The book
makes compelling arguments for continued relevance of "being there"
to learning, that concepts like distance learning or telecommuting will undoubtedly
have a profound change on us, but "being there" is fundamental to
how we learn, often in ways we never expected. The book is not your typical
"futurist" tome extrapolating the future based on linear thinking,
rather the authors provide a rich, contextual background on human behavior
that teaches the reader almost as if it were an anthropology class, only better.
The book also devotes a chapter to higher education and the challenges faced
by universities competing in the increasingly Darwinian world of customers
seeking the most efficient means to acquiring the knowledge they seek, at
the best price, without sacrificing the importance of the degree granted by
the institution. Execs of all stripes, marketing people, product development
people, and customer service types will find The Social Life of Information
worthwhile reading.
Rating:
Summary: The pitfalls of infocentricity
Review: Remember those fantastic predictions of the future from the 50s and 60s? Well, life in the 21st century doesn't quite measure up to these adventurous fantasies. Yet we've recently been assaulted by a slew of similar prognostications--but this time the "hero" of the story is the information revolution. According to its pundits, the onset of such incredible communications technologies as the Internet, cell phones, ubiquitous wireless connections and increased miniaturization will transform our world and society. We can look forward to the demassification of companies as "virtual" companies emerge, amalgams of independent specialists working from homes across the world. E-learning will transform the university. Bots will serve as our personal agents, scouring cyberspace to meet our needs. And so on, ad infinitum. Well, I'm still waiting--and will be waiting for a long time, according to John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid in The Social Life of Information. In this well-written and thoughtful book, Brown and Duguid draw us away from the "tunnel vision" promoted by infocentricity, an outlook that fails to see the social context of information. By commodifying information, they say, we are in danger of "tunnel design," creating technologies that not only fail to serve us effectively but "bite back," creating as many problems as they solve. Admitting that their ideas may pose more questions than answers, Brown and Duguid embark on an exploration of some of the latest trends and buzzes of the infoenthusiast. They state their purpose well: "We include prognostications about, for example, the world of information, digital agents, the home office, the paperless office, the virtual firm and the digital university. From here we try to explain why so many confident predictions remain just that, predictions. Too often, we conclude, the light at the end of an information tunnel is merely the gleam in a visionary's eye. The way forward is paradoxically to look not ahead, but to look around." And that's exactly what they do in an energetic and enthusiastic romp that is rich with meaning and practical implications.I thoroughly enjoyed their efforts and highly recommend this book to everyone involved in the information disciplines.
Rating:
Summary: myths of information technology
Review: Remember those predictions about the paperless office? Or the electronic cottage, where workers become telecommuters and never have to change out of their pajamas? And what about those claims by Internet enthusiasts who predicted the end of the "old economy"?
Why is it that organizational models for running a business keep going in and out of fashion? What was wrong with total quality management? Process reengineering? Flattened organizational structures? Computer scientist John Seely Brown and social scientist Paul Duguid have some thought-provoking answers to these questions.
Brown has long been associated with Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and is currently its director. Duguid is a research specialist in Education at UC Berkeley. And they're neither cranks nor nay-sayers. Both are firm advocates of change. They just want to point out what they consider to be some myths about information technology. Brown and Duguid suggest that information technology's enthusiasts don't honor the difference between information and knowledge. Some people "know" what they're talking about; some don't. Knowledge is information with a context, which includes the person or people who have it. As Brown and Duguid say, you can't separate knowledge from the knower. We forget that communication involves negotiation and then don't understand why others can't always accept what we say at face value. To illustrate, Brown retells the story of how the graphic user interface (GUI) developed at Xerox PARC was misunderstood and unappreciated by the rest of the company -- only to be embraced and taken to market by Apple.
The truth about learning is that it's social. You may read something in a manual or book or newspaper. It may seem like you're doing something by yourself. Just collecting information. But what you read was first made sense of by other people -- writers and editors. They used their own judgment and experience to decide what was worth putting into words and then how to organize it for your consumption. This is all the work of knowledge.
To illustrate that knowledge is a group activity, the authors describe a community of Xerox copier technicians, who developed an ongoing body of knowledge about servicing copiers that was not covered in their training. In essence a support group, they met informally before and after work for shop talk. And they discussed their experience of copiers with widely different problems. Some were so complex they required the knowledge of two technicians working in collaboration. Acting as individuals, using only their training, they wouldn't have been able to do their jobs. The training was, in fact, only information. Tried and tested against copiers "in the real world," then shared within an unofficial "community of practice," information became knowledge. I strongly recommend this book to anyone in knowledge management, education, IT, or training, because it shakes up so many assumptions about the information economy and knowledge transfer. It's a thought provoking read that will leave you with a good deal more savvy about how people learn.
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