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Summary: Jack Welch Should Have Read This
Review: This is a must read for anyone envisioning a business world of increased dependence on artificial intelligence at the expense of people, human relationships, and worker improvisation. Even Jack Welch could have benefited from reading this work.In a series of essays authors Brown and Duguid underscore the risks associated with subordinating human practice to process. (See Chapter 4.) Over reliance on process and "digeroti" convention potentially robs the enterprise of human insight and innovation. Indeed, a more dynamic and productive world suggested by this work is one that commingles ostensibly competing intelligences in a dance of creative abrasion. And, while Jack may have been happy with a 60% sell-through rate for some product areas at GE -- strictly based upon virtual reality -- incorporation of the human equation suggests results could have been augmented significantly. Perhaps, Jeff Immelt, the "new guy" at GE will understand better. In the meantime, lest any manager or leader be tempted to automate at the expense of human intelligence, these thought-provoking essays will definitely give pause. But, be forewarned! This is not a cookbook with take-away recipes. The reader will have to concoct customized prescriptions according to the needs of the organization(s) for which he or she is responsible.
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Summary: Lets go forward to the past
Review: This is a remarkable book, not simply in terms of its insights on how technologies can be misguided if they do no recognize the underlying social structure that they are there to support, but also with regard to the release of this book in March of 2000 at the height of the dot-com boom. In this book you will not find technological evangelicalism or ideas about how the Internet can change the world, but you will find thoughtful discussion about why online universities need the value of the offline university, why a knowledge economy cannot be understood in terms of a manufacturing paradigm of inter-changeable parts, why Chiat-Day's unstructured office design was an interesting concept but a failure in supporting the social structure of an office, and why groups of like-minded businesses will cluster in the same geographical area even though new technologies would elminate the need for proximity. This book is positive about technology, but asks to look first at the real impact and real opportunity. While this is an amazing book that I would highly recommend to everyone interested in this subject, I did think the delineation of new technology and existing social context did not explore emergining social patterns as a result of technological change. We can only hope for a book in the future on this topic by these authors
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Summary: Lucid, intelligent look beyond technohype
Review: This is one of the few indispensible books of the new information age, one that tempers the misleading fantasies of cyberutopians and rebuffs those who fear technology. By putting technology into its social context, the authors clear away the tunnel vision of so many people involved in the development of new technologies. By bringing together case studies from Xerox and other companies, they show why some technologies catch on and others don't, why imposing technology on workers is counterproductive and how people use technology to reinforce their social webs. Far from undermining our social, human world, technology ends up bending to it. They show why the Internet will not destroy universities, cities, nations and other institutions in the way so many people predict. This is a lucid, well-written book, mercifully free from technobluster and dreary jargon. A really excellent read.
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Summary: Where do you want to go today by staying at home
Review: This wonderfully written book by two leading IT specialists is so chock-a-block with colorful metaphors that one might think that there really is a future for people who believe that the internet is an evolutionary - not a revolutionary - gain in society and business. 'Where do you want to go today by staying at home'. They lament the focus the on technology over information in IT that "pushes aside all the fuzzy stuff - context, background, history..." as we deify the channel. Without a sense of community the knowledge and information that creates and sustains the business is lost and unfocused. Relying on frail and ever changing technology as the backbone of a business is a recipe for failure. Therefore the new depends on the stability of the old to succeed. However knowledge is nearly worthless without the mechanisms - both technological and social - to disseminate it. Knowledge is not a commodity to pass around like a shrimp ring that can be weighed, shipped or mined. Thus the information and knowledge structures of a business are based on two, distinct "I" "T" functions: networks, the collective knowledge of an organization and; communities, the informal collectives that filter, modify and utilize that information. And information flows along the "topography" of practice and routine in the organization. The key is to balance free form business structures with formal organizational practices. "To play with the boundaries - of firms, networks, communities, regions, and institutions - as innovation increasingly demands, requires first acknowledging them. If you can only read one business book on the future of IT, this is the one.
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Summary: Let's learn from each other
Review: You could read the official reviews above and get a pretty good idea of what this book is about. But chances are since you're an Amazon customer, you like reading these reviews from real readers out in the real world. Folks who don't just study books, but try to apply them in their lives and work. Well, that's what this book is about. How the context of human interaction (you reading this from another Amazon customer who actually reveals his real name, for example) is a critical factor in the true exchange of knowledge...not merely the processing of information. What "Cluetrain Manifesto" is to marketing, "The Social Life of Information" is to human resources and other "knowledge managers." Real people sharing experience-based wisdom is what helps us learn and grow...not surfing through chunks of information.
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