Information Ecologies: Using Technology With Heart [Hardcover]

Bonnie A. Nardi (Author), Vicki O'Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 1999

An information ecology is a system of people, practices, technologies and values in a local environment. Like their biological counterparts, information ecologies are diverse, continually evolving and complex. This text aims to encourage the reader to become more aware of the ways people and technology are interrelated. The authors draw on their empirical research in offices, libraries, schools and hospitals to show how people can engage their own values and commitments while using technology. The case studies show avenues for participation and engagement with technology.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart is Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day's thesis on how the average citizen has become distanced from the process of designing technology, resulting in technology that doesn't adequately serve the user's needs. Using the plot of the film Metropolis as their primary example, the authors explain how those who are creating technology are pouring their hearts into it, but aren't using their heads enough to anticipate whether "our creations can betray us."

Nardi and O'Day first draw on the works of prominent technology authors--such as Langdon Winner, Jacques Ellul, Nicholas Negroponte, and Clifford Stoll--examining various perspectives on technology design. Next, they define information ecology as "a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment." The book then urges readers to become involved in information ecologies and explains how to do so. Several case studies highlight successful information ecologies: a library setting, which emphasizes diversity of human personalities and technical resources without competition; Longview Elementary School in Phoenix, where students and educators collaborate to establish guidelines for responsible use of a virtual community called Pueblo; and a digital photography class, where the focus is on the value of the content being created rather than the sophisticated tools needed to perform the task of creation. A slim but inspiring book, Information Ecologies opens our eyes to the technology we use daily and prompts us to question how it could be better used or designed to meet our goals. --Cristina Vaamonde

Review

"[A] new and refreshing perspective on our technologically dependent society.... Information Ecologies is an antidote to our current infection: our unquestioning acceptance of, and dependence upon, technology. Nardi and O'Day demonstrate how technology can have a more humane face when handled properly and integrated into a social environment where the human factor isn't ignored." David Howell, Daily Telegraph

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Mit Pr; 1st edition (January 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262140667
• ISBN-13: 978-0262140669
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,363,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great concept with weak follow through, November 4, 1999

By 

MC Manoa "MCM" (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Information Ecologies: Using Technology With Heart (Hardcover)

I really wanted Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day to be a great book. Unfortunately it was only OK. As a librarian, with an undergraduate degree in Anthropology, I was intrigued that O'Day was described as a graduate student in anthropology and that the authors were using a library setting as one of their case studies. Finally, I thought, someone will definitively present to the world the value of what it is librarians DO and with anthropologically informed insight!

The authors do a very good job of summarizing the various "framing conversations" and "metaphors" that have been used to talk about technology and as the basis for analyzing the impact of technological change. They cite many books that I have read and enjoyed as thought-provoking discussions of technology and its role in society (Being Digital, Silicon Snake Oil, The Gutenberg Elegies, Technopoly, Life on the Screen) and use them to bolster their arguments in ways that will probably encourage others to seek out those books and read them (in fact I am inspired to delve into "ancient history" and read some of the older, seminal works the authors cite).

The writing style of the book is very clear and cordial but every time I felt I was being led through interesting discourse to a logical conclusion or culminating POINT I would exit a paragraph or chapter feeling somehow that there was no "there" there.

Interesting questions were raised and a persuasive thesis was put forward concerning why the old ways of thinking about technology should be superceded by their metaphor of "information ecology". The authors note (pg. 70) that "It is common to leap ahead to 'how' questions when we think about technology. [...] It is less common - but crucially important - to ask a full range of "why questions as well [...]" But at the end of the first section I felt *all* I had was a framework of questions, and no discussion of how the answers define an information ecology. The authors "conclusion" (page 74) was apparently that the whole matter is a "complex business" and "change can become confusing and overwhelming" but "talk" and "experiments" and "local settings" are the answer.

To which I heaved a sigh of "HUH?" and moved on to part 2 where I was promised that we would "look in detail at specific information ecologies ... [and] see examples that show diversity, coevolution, keystone species, and the application of values". OK! I was ready for some solid field work and logical analysis of the data to substantiate their new way of examining technology. What did I find? Redundant, boring, embarrassing and CONFUSING transcripts of interactions that definitely lost something in the translation. I have personal and extensive experience in environments similar to those described in chapters 7 (Librarians: a keystone species) and 9 (Cultivating Gardeners: the importance of homegrown expertise) and I couldn't tell how the material presented was supposed to illustrate their points! This is not to say that I didn't find much of the discussion interesting as a point of departure for thinking about those situations - but the transcripts of interviews were a distraction and waste of time. They should have been relegated to footnotes (or left out entirely). By the time I got to Chapter 10 and had to read interviews that were filled with "Yeah. And it's weird. I thought it was weird how you can get a picture into the computer" ... well, ya know it was, like, gag me with a spoon, ya know?

The last chapter was primarily a rehash of dozens of articles praising the Internet "as a riveting global phenomenon with important implications for local information ecologies". They state that "Information ecologies are local habitations with recognizable participants and practices" but nothing in the previous 184 pages had demonstrated that to me! I felt as if Chapter 13 had been tacked on to fill the book out to a reasonable length.

In spite of it all, I give the book 3 stars (I'd give it 2 1/2 if I could) because of the first section and the interesting observations that are scattered in the second section. The concluding paragraph on the last page quotes Annie Dillard - "we need to call our attention to what passes before our eyes". This book DOES do that - but I had hoped for so much more.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some effective arguments, some misguided, October 22, 1999

By 

Keola Donaghy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Information Ecologies: Using Technology With Heart (Hardcover)

According to the authors of this book we shouldn't believe that we can solve every problem by simply throwing technology at it. Nor should we be Luddites, bury our heads in the sand, and ignore the value of technology. The authors take the "middle ground", and present the the position that we must be "critical friends" of technology, and be sure that we not blindly accept technology as a panacea and allow it to dominate our lives.

I found some of their arguments against technological advances to be weak in some areas. For example, they discuss the moral ramifications of cloning, and whether or not we should allow cloning of human beings, or even investigate the possibility, "just because we can." They also quoted J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the hydrogen bomb, about his team's desire to move forward and build the bomb simply because they had proved in theory that it was possible. What to do with the bomb would be someone else's decision. I found the authors' arguments to be ineffective in that these situations represent extreme positions that most people could agree with. However, major advancements in science, medicine, mathematics and other fields have been achieved by individuals simply trying to "push the envelope." Indeed, the original hacker community was not a group of individuals trying to break into secure servers, they were programmers obsessed with perfection in programming techniques, trying to find the most efficient way to accomplish a task with the least amount of code. I wonder what side the authors would take in George Mallory's position of climbing Mt. Everest simply "because it's there." What would a "critical friend" of Mallory's say to him about his motivation?

I was a bit disturbed by their portrayal of Nicholas Negroponte as a someone who blindly accepts and promotes technology and it's inevitable place in our future, with no consideration of the consequences. They chide him for the technology-driven Utopia he describes in his book "Being Digital", with its technology that lacks any sense of social meaning or integration into society. Their portrayal fell just short of comparing Negroponte to Victor Frankenstein.

I felt their portrayal of Negroponte on one end of the scale and Cliff Stoll on the other was inaccurate. Though their opinions differ, they hardly represent the extreme ends of the spectrum. I suspect the authors' motivation for choosing these two individuals was their relative fame in the online community.

The authors conducted a number of impressive case studies that dominate the second half of the book. I found these chapters to be much more enjoyable and informative than the earlier chapters that attempt to strengthen their arguments. Their selection of librarians as a "keystone species" in the information ecology was insightful. I found their arguments for this selection as effective, but it too fell short. Rather than focusing simply on the end user, they could have also argued for the use of skilled librarians on the server and design end of the equation. The huge need for librarian skills at the client end highlights the deficiencies at the server and design end of the net.

I have never met an individual who believes that all of society's ills can be solved by throwing technology at it, as Nicholas Negroponte is portrayed in this book. If such a person does exist, this book was written for him or her, as it would be for a true Luddite. Unfortunately, I don't believe either would be swayed effectively by the authors' arguments.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Interesting Information Ecology: Missing a Few Links, April 21, 2009

By 

Melissa Archer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart (Paperback)

When I first started reading this book, I was instantly intrigued. It's rare to find an academic book that ties in so many non-academic works. Throughout Information Ecologies, the authors tie in outside sources such as the movie Metropolis, and the virtual world of "Pueblo." Although the latter was an ethnographic study, it was still rather interesting and tied in the general public.

The book actually begins, after the introduction of the movie, with a section explaining how technology is viewed and how information ecologies are built, as well as how they evolve. In theory, the first part of this book is a good format. The authors explain what an information ecology is and focus on the different terminology associated with technology. However, the authors discuss several outside sources, but fail to fully explain them. For example, authors Stoll and Negroponte's work is mentioned, but not fully explained. The information the authors provide in the first few chapters seems to merely skirt around the argument, and never fully incorporated into it. I think it is a good idea to incorporate outside sources to back an argument, but the authors of this book never seem to fully explain how the sources they provide tie into their argument.

The second half of the book, "Case Studies," includes examples of information ecologies. The examples are of actual ethnographic studies the authors performed. These include a library (specifically the librarians in it), a virtual world, "gardeners" in a workplace, and a digital photography class. These chapters gave good recaps of the research they did and their findings. However, the one about the virtual world stuck out most to me. This chapter, about the virtual world "Pueblo," was interesting because they discussed a lot of aspects of this ecology other than the basic ones introduced in the first part of the book. The authors focused on who the people using the program actually are and who they presented themselves as in the program. The mass amount of real life examples in this part of the book helps non-academic readers be able to relate better to what the authors are presenting. This section also seems a lot clearer and better explained than the first.

Something I found especially useful was the second to last chapter before the conclusion, in which the authors discussed an information ecology that did not work out. The authors not only discuss the ecology itself and what went wrong, but why it went wrong. This was really interesting and unique because most books tend to focus only on the positives. This ecology was about a new system "used for remote broadcast of surgical events during neurosurgeries" (169). I also liked how the authors tied in the section about strategic questions from the first part as a means of preventing an information ecology from failing.

Considering that this book was written in 1999, a lot of the information provided is out of date. However, the section about the Internet as an information ecology is rather insightful. A lot of the predictions the authors have made throughout the book have actually come true. The final chapter in the book sums up all of the information provided. When summed up that way, it shows that each example of an information ecology presented by the authors exemplified a certain aspect of an information ecology.

Overall, I think the authors had a good concept and theoretical game plan. However, a lot of their information provided did not seem to match up completely with what they were attempting to say. Also, I could never figure out who the intended audience is. Most of the time it seemed to be aimed at the general public because of the extra time spent explaining certain concepts. However, some of the time the authors seem to go off on a tangent aimed at the academic world. I believe this book is best suited for someone who is interested in the aspects of an information ecology and would like some good examples to refer to. This book would also work well for a teacher or employer who is trying to incorporate technology (new or existing) into his or her workplace.