Slashdot Mirror
The Social Life Of Information
The Scenario
Hemos keeps handing me these books about how information technology is shaping our lives, how the digital is leaving an indelible stamp on the analog. What Brown and Duguid have done is write a refreshing reminder that no matter how it seems, it's the analog that shapes the digital, and social systems that are steering the way we use computers. I know, it sounds like talking-head crap, but the authors are from PARC, which is not really a place where people go to sit on their hands or be flighty.
Here are some of the pithy issues raised in The Social Life of Information:
- Agents -- the technology for artifical intelligence agents keeps improving, but the social structure for them is staying put. Who controls these agents? Do we really expect Amazon to have our best interests at heart? There are already agents that go through and reap information on you for nefarious purposes; who is going to develop protection agents?
- Telecommuting -- why hasn't telecommuting taken off like we thought it would? Where are the hordes of people working happily at home? Despite the myth of the lone hacker working away, we all know that our best tricks are usually gleaned from some keyboarding compatriot who shows us a thing or two. This is true in almost every other field as well. Even given two people of equal skill, their output is usually more than the sum of their efforts. There is something to be said for working in meatspace.
- Process vs. practice -- why is it that when we try encapsulate something in documentation, it always falls short? We've all had someone hand us a manual outlining some practice that ends up propping up an uneven table. It's also common wisdom that the best way to learn how to code is to actually start writing some code. Do you think this is unique to the computer profession?
- Newspaper -- why is it that newspaper still persists when there are a host of other, more interactive ways we can absorb the news? Newspaper has resisted the attacks of televison news, but will it be able to do the same with news provided by computer? This is a great example of how social systems colliding with technological systems at the point where information is disseminated. Newspaper is a great technology in many ways (yes, newspaper is a technology), but there is a constant pressure to come up with an alternative to it.
- Education -- why does the university continue to exist? Will information technology put the final nail in the coffin of the ol' university? Not damned likely. I get my share of ribbing from the Slashdot crew about being an academic, and I think there is rightfully some skepticism in the tech sector about the value of higher education. The university system has been around for more than a thousand years, and the authors of this book put their fingers right on why it is still a successful organism, one that is growing rather than dying out. Here's the secret: You don't go to a place of higher education for the courses, you go in order to hang out with like-minded people. That is hard to replicate on the Web, and "community" has become the buzzword that "portal" was 15 minutes ago. Who cares what classes I take as a graduate student? What's important is working with people who are interested in the same questions.
The central theme of this book, never overtly spelled out by the authors, for better or worse, is that Human interaction revolves around issues of trust, and trust in the anonymous computer realm is hard (but not impossible) to come by. Reputation systems are an important components of that, but in reality we judge the trustworthiness of a person on a million different factors, and it is hard to code that many different variables. A firm handshake, a shared joke, social capital, and a legion more of these nearly imperceptible cues allows us to work together. We're an overblown troop of monkeys in some ways, and would be foolish to deny that we're hardwired for these kinds of judgments.
What Duguid and Brown point out is that we ignore our monkey-ness when designing systems that are intended to replace face to face, human interaction. As my Uncle Bob once told me, "Embrace that monkey!" Keep in mind when designing your systems what invisible threads you are missing.
What's Bad?Like in most books of this kind, I really had hoped for more hard statistics. Sometimes the authors make some statement about the shape of the universe that seems plausible enough, but I wonder would it hold up to the cold light of descriptive statistics. Still, it's not really the job of this book to provide information like this, and I'm just being a cranky pseudo-scientist. The only other thing that rubbed me the sandpaper way was a little repetition of the theme. A couple of chapters could have been reduced into one.
What's Good?
Technically speaking, the writing is efficient and readable, with lots of fine examples and an easy progression that makes this a quick and enjoyable read. This is something that would go very quickly as a free time read, and since the chapters are fairly autonomous, you can make it one of those books you just crank a few pages through before you fall asleep and absorb the meaning.
On the content side, this book is fantastic. I would like to buy a few dozen copies and pass them out in airports while I wear saffron robes. Or leave them in hotel rooms Gideon style. It's a vindication for a small, yet vocal, community of people who have addressed these issues is the past, while not blaming or talking down to the people who have refused to include the human in their design. It also gives some practical advice for people who would like to examine information from a more holistic point of view, including how to introduce a new technology into an already existing social system (Alexander Graham Bell did this). The Social Life of Information is one of those rare books that informs without preaching, advocates without subjecting, and entertains without pandering. It is a smart attempt at stepping away from the technological roller coaster (without getting out of line) and seeing how the social systems enveloping the technology batter it about. This is an important read for any person involved in information technology to read.
So What's In It For Me?
Hopefull, some humility. It is one thing to create brilliant technological systems, it is another to get people to use them. Despite the crap we usually give marketing guys, they instinctively understand some of these points. It also has a message for the Open Source movement. Often, an open source project fails because it does not adequately account for the social factors surrounding it. What are the social bits and pieces that surround a project that is trying to produce open source software?
I'm a little giddy from my tech high these days. Think of this book as intellectual and creative caffeine. A hundred ideas for projects must be outlined in my margin notes on this book. This book at the same time will reaffirm what you do, and debunk it. If you can take the cold dash of reflection, you'll be better off for it.
Other important links ...
Buy this fine text at ThinkGeek. Also, check out the Web site dedicated to this book. There's always a site for a book like this these days. You may also want to read an earlier John Seeley Brown deal called The Social Life of a Document.
Transhumanism: Sitting around waiting for AI and technology to magically come to life to solve everyone's problems.
Luddite: Sitting around bitching that AI and technology hasn't solved everyone's problems.
I hate to rain on the exremists' parade, but tech is a tool and can be controlled by legislation. The problem as usual is the wants of the powerless compared to the wants of the powerful.
As for the DNA strand "meaning" blue hair - sorry, but DNA is just a bunch of nucleic acids on a base. The DNA strand "becomes" blue hair because the messenger RNA creates a negative template and then creates the protein which signals the body to turn on the mechanism for making hair blue.
That mnakes 3 observers, by my count. The reader, the protein processor, and the blue hair generator.
=SOME= information is dependent on context, and DNA is one such piece of information. Other pieces are truly independent. The Mandelbrot Set, for example, does not depend on who looks at it, to be a fractal. THAT information is truly independent.
What, then, is the difference? IMHO, if it's implementation-specific, the chances are that there is a part of the implementation which involves an "observer". If it's NOT, then an observer is not required.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Some of these ideas and thoughts are really great, but it's really quite simple how and why societies adopt methods of doing things.
The point was raised about telecommuting. Telecommuting is not extremely popular for several reasons.
1 - It's new.
2 - Companies can't keep an eye on their employees to make sure they're actually working
3 - Many niggling things crop up. Even as a network engineer and system administrator, doing my job would have been more difficult from home. Sometimes you have to be at a machine physically if there's a problem. Sometimes hard copies go around that you need to see - and who wants to scan or fax everything to you when they can just hand it to the rest of the employees? Plus there are the legal aspects -- can I claim my PC and 1/3rd of my home and bills as work expenses?
These things contribute to the fact that telecommuting is in most implementations, at the very least, a hassle. But what really counts is perception. If your Boss perceives that telecommuting is a viable solution, you will be able to telecommute. The more people perceive telecommuting as a viable solution, the more people actually implement it. Seeing other companies implement telecommuting is one way to spread the perception of its viability
Newspapers. There are many reasons people still read them.
1. It's old, it's been done, it works (contrary to New things; see above). People perceive it as a proven technology and as a proven business model.
2. Screens suck for comfortable reading. If you work at a computer all day, you probably get sore eyes. Even with my 21" monitor and the brains to put my monitor at the correct angle, right refresh, etc etc., my eyes still get fatigued by staring at a computer screen for extended lengths of time. Newspapers are easy on the eyes.
3. Portability. Can't beat a newspaper.
4. Cheap. Disposable. 1001 uses for a dead newspaper; lining the birdcage, wrapping stuff for shipping, art projects, etc etc.
Newspapers are a part of most people's life because they grew up with them, and they're comfortable getting that newspaper.
As more people 'defect' to online news sources, or to television, the perception of newspapers will change. As online news sources become more reliable and accurate, more visible, and perceived as 'trustworthy', a shift will occur. Newspapers may never die totally, but the cost of producing them as subscribers decline will severely hamper them. You maintain a complete staff to put out x pages of quality newsprint, regardless of how many copies you print.
The internet is still in its infancy. When 99% of the U.S. is broadband-connected and have a PC at home for every person, really radical changes will occur.
Until then, word of mouth and eyewitness testimony contribute mostly to what people 'perceive' as what they think is normal and comfortable. Why do most people in the States eat with silverware? Because they perceive it's correct and normal. Many things are deep-rooted in our social conscious, and we bank on precedent because it's comfortable.
Comfort -- with what we want and what we perceive as 'normal' based on what other people do. New things come about because some people are willing to go through the discomfort of being first adopters.
Everything we do is about and for people. Whether it's ourselves, our neighbors, or our descendants. Information without people is just a pattern without an observer. Whatever changes happen to our society because we digest, process, and produce information more quickly -- just because we use a different machine to do it -- will happen at its own pace and in its own way because of the early adopters who suffer and champion, and the secondary adopters who proselytize and spread the perception to others.
Ha! I didn't get laid until I was nearly 29, didn't drink that much in college, and paid for it with grants and student loans, which I now have to pay back.
You obviously went to the wrong school!
I was in the college of engineering at the University of Illinois (in Champaign-Urbana), not an environment that one would think of as "sex, drugs, rock and roll and no consiquences for four years." Nevertheless, I and many people I know had far more than our share of those, and many other, pleasurable vices.
It is a lifestyle I miss sorely now that I'm in the real world, despite enjoying a lifestyle I could never have afforded on a college budget.
Of course, I too paid for school with grants and student loans which I am still paying back.
:-)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
ISTR Richard Feynman on the BBC interview he did many years ago telling a story about his father, Melvil (sp?)
Basically, Melvil couldn't swim. But one day he read a book on swimming, and then went down to the sea and swam about 20 yards. The point, which was not lost on his children, was that you could learn to do stuff by reading a book.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
I dunno, maybe it's jsut me...
Working for the (other) man
A string of Os and 1s, no matter how carefully
modulated, means nothing unless it is eventually channeled, observed and understood by a recipient
</QUOTE>
So if a stream fails in the forest and no one hears, there is no sound. Wow, I've been wondering about that for some time now I know.
-Peace
Dave
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
But us geeks, especially the old timers who started with 110buad, then to 300, then 1200, up to 56k have higher reading speeds from keeping up with increasing modem speed. We can read at over 1k words/minute, but most people speak
Fight Spammers!
----
Of course the analog shapes the digital! The silly talk occasionally bandied about concerning the death of universities in favor of some digital alternative illustrates this perfectly.
How so? I learned as a youngster that universities will always be with us. Growing up in an age of (to paraphrase Austin Powers) sex, drugs, and a consequence-free environment gives me a more basic view of the social role of college. And there's no way that role can be supplanted by anything online.
Let me make the point another way. When I was a senior in high school, there was a drama teacher who would counsel students who were sharp enough for college but considering not going because they seemed to have some sort of short-term employment opportunities that were drawing them. If the guidance counselor failed to persuade them to go to college, this drama teacher would call them aside for "the talk." "The talk" went, roughly: "Look, dumbass, college is four years of unlimited sex and alcohol paid for by your parents. Are you really stupid enough to NOT go?"
Every single student he counseled, IIRC, decided to go to college.
Now, show me the online university that can match that sales pitch!
I reiterate: The analog shapes, controls, and provides the sole justification for the existence of the digital.
The book sounds worth reading. I'll have to look for it.
Telecommuting -- why hasn't telecommuting taken off like we thought it would? Where are the hordes of people working happily at home? Despite the myth of the lone hacker working away, we all know that our best tricks are usually gleaned from some keyboarding compatriot who shows us a thing or two.
Mainly because one of the biggest challenges on any team is communication: making sure everyone understands what they are supposed to do. Communication is somewhat easier in person that over the phone or through email, and it has a more dynamic quality: I can wander by someone's desk, glance at what's going on and either say "wow, show me how you did that!" or "wait a minute, are you sure that's a good idea?" When people work off site, you tend to get less frequent interactions: they go off and work for a long while then send something in.
Mao was a dictator, Kaczynski a murderer and a coward.
I'm not talking about destroying people, I'm talking about destroying power and the information used to maintain that power. I don't want to lead any revolution, because any sincere revolution has no leaders (thus, anarchism).
If you'd like to discuss those viewpoints, I suggest you bring up valid arguments, as opposed to making uninformed assumptions.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I think the author fails to see that the reason computers and the Internet have become what they are is the ease with which they facilitate human interaction. It's similar to chicken and egg: the internet evolved and now we need to look at the human interaction with it, or was it that human need to interact facilitated the Internet. The author needs to look at the human drive to be social.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
You'd also think that most readers were enlightened enough to offer contrary viewpoints WITHOUT feeling a need to put down the views of others.
Lastly, you'd also think that readers could dispense with the absolutes. Absolutes generally aren't, and there are more exceptions than rules.
As for information existing in a vaccuum, some does and some doesn't. If you want to claim that ALL information exists in a vaccuum, you might want to tell me how long the coastline of America is. Absolutely. If you can, you'll have disproved Mandelbrot's claim that it depends on the observer's ruler, and have falsified the entire basis of fractals and chaos theory.
You might also want to tell me the speed and direction of a sub-atomic particle of your choice. Again, if information exists in a vaccuum, and is in no way affected by an observer, this should be easy.
But these kinds of information AREN'T easy to seperate from observers, are they? It's easy to make absolute statements, as though everything in the Universe would obey them as Divine Laws.
Unfortunately, for human egos, the Universe has a tendancy to give the Agincourt Salute to such pretensions of grandeour, and exist in whatever mishmash of ways it damn well feels like.
Last, but not least, is your computer a solid object? To you, sure! But to the billions of neutrinos, that blithely ignore the repulsion of the electron shell, maybe not.
On another level, matter is energy. It's not merely equal to it (E=MC^2), but is a condensed form. What, then, distinguishes an observer from the observed? They're just different configurations of energy, after all.
Before you tell someone their view is wrong, stop to ask if there -is- any validity to what they are saying. After all, if there isn't, flamers and trolls would never have the incentive to behave as they do. Trolls are, because they're too cowardly to accept that others might have something right.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Technology often doesn't work the way it is expected to because the technologists often make fatally flawed assumptions about the end user or about the way end users will interact with the technology. This is even true of most of the software that, at least in the advertising hype, is designed with the user in mind. A lot of sweet technology is sweet, but of little or no interest or use to non-techies. We can all name any number of heavily hyped, truly cool tech products that failed because they were cool but not much use or sometimes were just useless to anyone but techies.
Perhaps the key point in the book is that people working together is a fundamentally social activity and that technology must be designed with that in mind. Technology that seeks to limit or control the social aspects of work will fail or prove to be counter-productive. This insight runs counter to almost all 20th century management guru thinking, especially the sort found on the best seller list. A second point that the book drives home again, and we (or certainly the media) do seem to need constant reminding of, hype isn't reality and anything that everyone agrees is the next thing, probably itsn't and even if it is, it probably won't turn out to be all its cracked up to be.
Closing thought: one of the things that makes the internet generally different from many commerical tech system implementations is that it actually promotes or facilitates communication in a very open and robust way. It does so because of design decisions made in the earliest days of arpanet, many of which run directly counter to the closed/proprietary models of most technology vendors. (A point I don't recall Brown and Selig making.)
This is a Good Book (TM), and well worth reading, and timothy 's writeup is solid. However, I was turned off initially by what I still consider to be an inexcusable failing of the book.
Per my standard practice, after cracking the spine, I went to first the ToC, then the back of the book -- the index. Entries for Microsoft, Apple, Xerox, PARC, IBM, Intel, Sun, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc., etc., etc.
Entries for: Linux, Free Software Foundation, GNU, Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, Eric S. Raymond, Open Source, Apache -- nil. Ponder this: how many pages are printed worldwide by Xerox copiers in a week? How many pages are served worldwide by Apache webservers in an hour? "The document company" is completely dissing the Internet -- the largest, most accessible, and most efficient document distribution system ever invented?
The fact that a book could be published in the year 2000 with no references to the largest sea-change to sweep computing and IT in two decades, well into its mainstream adoption curve, is mind boggling. I'm not sure whether it's a failing of the indexers (though I don't recall specific mentions of any free software technologies, though the 'Web is referenced once or twice), the authors, or simply an example of failed vision at PARC. I remain simply stunned.
That said, where the book does go, it's good. By and large, it's an argument for many of the dynamics which make free software work. FS is a social invention as much as a technical one, and as much as our interfacing occurs over the web, email, and (sometimes) phone, I've also met some good friends FTF at local LUGs, regional meetings, and on occasions when paths crossed, even when oceans were bounded in the process.
Read this book, but read it critically.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Why are we so intent on replacing newspapers when they are the most effective medium for news?
Because newspapers aren't a medium for news. They're a medium for a lot of other things, and in the small amount of their square-footage they give to current events, they're normally a medium for distortion and propaganda.
And they're filtered down until so much information is removed that the "common man" can understand what's left - whether it's true or not, whether or not selective ommission amounts to a subtle lie. This makes them totally useless to the "uncommon man" - a tag which, on one subject or another, can be applied to nearly anyone.
Newspapers are being replaced by internet-based reporting because the internet lowers the barriers to entry. This means that current events reportage can be made with a variety of slants, not solely from those that appeal to the people with the money to own and operate the monopoly that is a chain of big-city newspapers, or a piece of the oligopoly that is the set of broadcast networks.
Though each reporter may use different colored filters as he views current events, combining enough colored images can give a clear picture.
And you can't enforce selective ommission when anybody can play - because SOMEBODY will find "the other side" interesting enough to report.
News reporting has been in decline for about a half century, as a combination of economic forces, government intervention, and social activism has limited both the number of viewpoints and the amount of coverage. The internet has now changed the game.
Newspapers can drastically remake themselves - along the line of their claimed ideals - to stay in the game. Or they can survive by filling some other need than delivering news.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The point of doing so would be to do so in a revolutionary sense, not so much to make the current social system a little better, but to open up the possibility of completely changing to a new social system (specifically, anarchism).
During the Paris Commune of 1868, when the people of Paris declared independance from France, and created a city based (loosely) on anarchist-communist principles, one thing that people did was to break into government buildings and destroy public records.
This is how they got the support of the middle class (petit bourgois, or small business owners). Most small business owners are heavily in debt to the banks and landlords. By destroying that debt, they were given control over their business. Because this was anarchist-communism, the only stipulation was that they shared control with their workers.
That's basically my "inspiration" for putting forth this viewpoint.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
I see your point, and I don't think I made myself clear enough in regards to the fact that destroying oppressive data is really only a single tactic amongst many to move towards an anarchist society.
Destroying data alone will only cause some major headaches for the system, but it won't really change anything. However, destroying data at the same time that general strikes are occurring, political prisoners are being liberated, workers are taking over factories, farmers are redistributing land, mass protests are occurring, creating mutual aid organizations (like creating free software) and workers cooperatives, etc., would do a *lot* to aid revolution.
Done within this context, targetted data destruction can be a nuclear weapon. Done outside of this context, it's more like a good strong louisville slugger.
"The urge to destroy is a creative urge." - Mikhail Bakunin. Yet, I'm not a nihilist, so I don't think destruction is the only part of revolution.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
The difference is that anarchy can be achieved non-violently, whereas communism can't, since anarchism is meant to eliminate positions of power, whereas communism is simply a changing of the guard.
I'll remind you that Gandhi was an anarchist.
I'll also remind you that positions of power and government in general commits mass murder on a daily basis. I don't condone revolutionary anarchist actions, but they can be achieved non-violently, whereas capitalism can't (or is violently unwilling).
You're right, you haven't researched anarchism enough. I would recommend you do.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Anyone who has taken any kind of creative writing class knows that the only way you get better at writing is to write. The only way you get better at running is to run, the only way you get good at X is to do X, it's a universal truth. Yeah, you can read all the books you want on something, but you are just a layman until you get out and write that first line of code, or that first line of verse, or run that first race.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
I urge everybody out there (especially those of you who are transhumanists) to read the criticisms of technology and society put forth by John Zerzan, especially "Future Primitive and Other Essays".
His books will definitely make you think (sometimes at a price, a good chunk of his work has a tendency to really piss me off), and make you question the role of technology in current society.
I began reading his work because I am writing a series of essays on technology and it's role in revolutionary movements, specificially left anarchist and anti-authoritarian ones. I felt that if I were to understand my own position, I should understand the other side of the coin (kind of like reading Marx and Rand when you consider yourself an Anarchist, or the Bible when you consider yourself to be an atheist).
I can't say he made a convert of me (at least not yet), but I can say that he's brought up some very interesting points about technology and how it is used to control society. It's because of these viewpoints that my own viewpoints have been further radicalized. While I support technology, I have come to the conclusion that oppressive technology and information (credit card debt, tracking information, prison histories, etc) must be destroyed, blocked, or circumvented in order for any real social progress to occur.
I'll elaborate more in the next few months, but I have to reiterate that Zerzan's writings, while sometimes infuriating, and not always perfectly coherent, are definitely worth reading.
Yes, you can get them at Amazon.com, but I would recommend that you, instead, support your local bookstore or anarchist infoshop.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Think about this though.
You are on a team that has been assigned a rather complex project to be coded in C. Would you rather have someone on your team that knows C really well and has written some nifty utilities, or someone who has never even used C (or any language except MIX on a virtual machine :) but has studied design patterns and algorithm analysis.
Personally, I'd rather have the academic, because the guys who just know C really well are a dime a dozen.
Well, actually they are a lot more expensive than that, but they are common :)
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
Er, that should be "I don't condone all revolutionary anarchist actions."
Here's a few things I want to point to. You say I condone mass murder, which is interesting. Why do you think mass murder would be necessary for the following to occur?
General strikes - The workers simply stop working. If the people in power insist on forcing them to work, that is fascism and slavery. Who has the moral high ground, then?
Liberating political prisoners - Simple. All you need is enough guards who sympathise with the situation.
Workers taking over factories - They work there already, no? This happens pretty often all over the world. Sometimes it works, usually the workers get violently attacked by hired thugs or the police (is there a difference?). Once again, who has the moral high ground?
Farmers redistributing land - Destroy records of ownership, and this can be done very non-violently. Does the CEO of Maxxam corporation really know exactly what lands he owns?
Mass protests are occurring - Protests are, by nature, non-violent. It's only the government response that is violent.
Creating mutual aid organizations - It's very obvious that doing this is not violent.
I think your problem is that you've grown up in a culture of violence, one that insists that every problem be solved with a violent response. Think outside the box, the best way to topple the system is with a population that refuses to passively be a part of it.
And another thing, as global capitalism increases it's stranglehold on the planet, you'll see a large backlash. The hope of anarchists is that this means liberation and freedom, as opposed to a series of fascist dictatorships.
Michael Chisari
mchisari@usa.net
Process vs. practice: It's also common wisdom that the best way to learn how to code is to actually start writing some code. Do you think this is unique to the computer profession?
This question is borderline silly. Sheesh, where to begin? Well, first off, do you learn anything by simply reading? Let me guess, you drove to work today. And you didn't learn to drive by sitting around reading Driving for Dummies or Teach Yourself Automobiles. You got in the car in the parking lot and used the machine. Same goes for cooking: a cookbook does you no good if you can't have a kitchen in which to experiment. But, sure, the book will help. And would Strunk and White's Elements of Style be useful, unless you planned on actually implementing them, and trying to write on your own? Of course not.
So now I feel compelled to get this book and read it over the summer... Thanks, /.