John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid would decline the offer of a lift on this road. In their new book, The Social Life of Information, they say they prefer to slowly and steadily explore the road's surrounding terrain. They'd make a stop here and there to check out a tourist trap or converse with the locals at a dusty cafe.

As they note, "The way forward is paradoxically not to look ahead but to look around." They're concerned with the "practice" of knowledge rather than the "process" of information, making them more akin to information archeologists than information technologists.

To them, looking around means considering the context of information rather than simply its content. Marshall McLuhan argued much the same in the 1960s when he proclaimed that the medium (context) was really the message (content).

The authors' different specialties make them interesting tour guides. Brown is chief scientist at Xerox and director of its Palo Alto Research Center. Duguid is a history professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a social theorist affiliated with PARC.

They see the modern world cluttered with institutions, media and structures that futurologists and technopromoters predicted would be extinct by now: the paperless office, the home office, the smaller entrepreneurial firms, to name a few in their long list.

The rise of the information age has likewise brought about a good deal of "endisms," among them the end of: the press, television and mass media; brokers and other infomediaries; firms, bureaucracies and universities; government, cities, regions and nation states.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF INFORMATION

One reason futurist predictions have been off target, according to Brown and Duguid, is the mythology that envelops information. As they note, this mythology "overpower[s] richer explanations" of the consequences of information and blinds us to the forces behind technological change.

Information mythology is the fuel for "infoenthusiasts" and futurists. This group, according to the authors, rages "against the illogic of humankind and the primitive preferences that lead it astray" while they "continue to tell us where we ought to go."

By "taking more account of people and a little less of information, they might instead tell us where we are going." The authors suggest it's one thing to argue that many of our old structures will not survive the onslaught of the new information economy, but it's another to argue that we don't need them in the new economy.

The most relevant chapter for the business world is "Practice Makes Process," which relates information mythology to the early 1990s re-engineering management fad. According to Brown and Duguid, re-engineering was based on the information-friendly process view of an organization rather than a contextual, social practice view. Information - without the context of a social life - fits well into process but has trouble when put into practice.

The authors' examples of how knowledge and learning is created informally in corporations (particularly Julian Orr's research at Xerox) merit the price of admission. Readers learn that collaboration, narration and improvisation are important (yet relatively hidden) methods that result in information that becomes corporate knowledge.

The university system is another key area where information mythology exists. Many people have predicted that virtual universities would replace brick-and-mortar institutions. This has not happened because universities do far more than deliver information to passive learners.

But the problems that information mythology has caused are minor compared with the ones that loom in the future as information becomes a more ubiquitous part of the Internet's "DNA infrastructure." The gap continues to narrow between smart "bots" and humans, with bots increasingly taking on human names like "personal assistants" and "agents." At the same time, human activities like "brokering" and "negotiating" sound robotic.

These agents perform "collaborative filtering," the familiar product-brokering activity: They match past activity with product suggestions. While the agents are supposed to represent buyers, they often act as double agents and represent sellers, too. For example, recall the publisher-paid endorsements on Amazon.com or how American Airlines' Sabre reservation system was revealed to be weighted toward American.

It's increasingly difficult to determine whose interests agents represent. As Brown and Duguid note, "We might be able to use agents, but how many are able to understand their biases among the complex mathematics of dynamic preference matching?"

Confusion between knowledge and information underlies many of the problems information mythology causes. As Brown and Duguid note, knowledge entails a "knower," but people treat information as independent and self-sufficient. It sounds right to ask "Where is information?" but not right to ask "Where is knowledge?" The authors argue it's difficult to separate knowledge from information: It can't be picked up, passed around, found or compared.

THE PROFESSIONAL DEBUNKER

While Brown and Duguid make a compelling argument against information mythology, they can also be placed in a growing category of "information age debunkers." Witness books like Lawrence Lessig's Code, Douglas Rushkoff's Coercion, John Willinsky's Technologies of Knowing, David Shenks' Data Smog and Clifford Stoll's Silicon Snake Oil.

Certainly the past few years have seen an abundance of "cyber-snake oil" promotion. In this sense, the information debunkers' criticisms give a welcome breath of fresh air. Yet one can argue criticism of information mythology often goes too far in promoting its own cause.

For example, while Web-based universities aren't exactly all they're cracked up to be, neither is brick-and-mortar academia, which Brown and Duguid idealize. For proof, look at the growing connection between universities and business. A recent story in the Atlantic Monthly, "The Kept University," describes how corporations are providing more and more of the money that supports academic research - especially at Duguid's UC Berkeley.

And the bare "content" of information is not always a bad thing. The subliminal context that surrounds brands - slick advertising images and packaging - often obscures the mediocre "content," the product itself. Information wrapped in context is a "hidden persuader" - the backbone of America's consumer culture - rather than the friendly communities of "practice" Brown and Duguid suggest.

Despite these minor criticisms, The Social Life of Information is an important book. Unlike many other "information age debunkers," Brown and Duguid wisely stand back from prescription. "We do not have solutions to offer," they note at the end. "We only know that solutions will be much harder to find if we drive at the problems with tunnel vision" and if "peripheries and margins, practices and communities, organizations and institutions are left out or swept out of consideration."

The authors face a formidable opponent in an age more entranced with information-based answers than context-based questions. If you have a problem, they note, redefine it in terms of information and you have an answer. "It allows people to slip quickly from questions to answers," they write.

This brings us back to Bill Gates on the cover of The Road Ahead. Microsoft plays it both ways: It asks a question and simultaneously proffers an answer. Its advertisements ask "Where do you want to go today?" The images in these ads, however, are of people sitting eagerly at computers. The subtle suggestion is that digital information is enough. In a world of ready-made answers, it's refreshing that authors like Brown and Duguid are instead asking the important questions.

John Fraim is president of the GreatHouse, a publisher and consulting firm in Santa Rosa, Calif. -- From The Industry Standard

"The Social Life of Information will help technologists keep an eye on the bigger picture and avoid the tunnel vision that can lead promising companies down blind alleys."
-Dr. Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Novell, Inc.

"The Social Life of Information provides a wonderfully refreshing counterpoint to the legion of information revolution gurus with their boundless confidence that the 'Net will remake the world. From management to research to universities, Brown and Duguid show how information is embedded in social relationships and institutions, and how knowledge management must therefore focus on the social dimension every bit as much as on technology."
-Francis Fukuyama, Hirst Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University, and Author of Trust and The Great Disruption

"Despite all predictions that the information revolution will bring us a bloodless workplace of machines and Dilberts, Brown and Duguid show us that human interactions, human conversations, and human meaning will still form the beating heart of business. Wonderful! A necessary read for everyone interested in the new economy."
-W. Brian Arthur, Citibank Professor, Santa Fe Institute

"The Social Life of Information makes a clear and compelling case that the social context of information will determine which tools will work and which will bite back, often in unanticipated ways. Anyone seeking to shape our new world by harnessing the power of information technology should read this book."
-John Hagel, Partner, McKinsey & Company, and Author of Net Worth

"In The Social Life of Information, Brown and Duguid help people throughout business, academia, government, and society at large to better understand that information technology can have an appropriate and positive impact only if we design technology and social systems holistically. This is a book that I have long awaited, and that should be required reading for the information technology system researchers and designers, managers, policy makers, and executives in every information-intensive organization."
-Daniel E. Atkins, Professor, University of Michigan, School of Information and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

"The Social Life of Information is timely and important. Brown and Duguid eloquently present a dynamic and multilayered view of the nature of learning and work and, indeed, learning in work. They show convincingly how critical issues of knowledge management and innovation rely on an intricate web of relationships between process and practice, structure and spontaneity, technological reach and personal reciprocity."
-Gary Hamel, Founder and Chairman, Strategos, and Author of Competing for the Future

"In this age of the euphoric pursuit of information for its own sake, we often forget that information is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. This extremely readable and informative book reminds us to consider the social context into which knowledge and information must be placed. We ignore its message at our peril."
-James R. Houghton, Chairman of the Board, Emeritus, Corning Incorporated

"In this important and finely argued volume, Brown and Duguid point out that technology occurs in a social context that is often overlooked: that things like habit, work environments, and human judgment play a major role in how, when, and even whether technology gets adopted. A refreshing and timely counter to the infoenthusiasts who think Moore's Law solves every problem, The Social Life of Information is a must read for the digitally endowed."-Jack Smith, Correspondent, ABC News

"The Social Life of Information starts a thoughtful conversation about the impact of information technology on our lives and our institutions. It is a richly humanistic search for context, concerned with issues of meaning, purpose, and judgment. In graceful and accessible prose, Brown and Duguid provoke sensitive and deep questions as they seek a balanced perspective about new and old, tradition and innovation, and institutions and individuals."
-Jonathan Fanton, President, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

"An intellectually honest and immensely enjoyable antidote to the scores of overly simplistic projections of the impact of information technology. While there is no doubt this impact will be immense, its precise form is yet unknowable. By raising questions about what that form might be Brown and Duguid expose the pundits' unstated assumptions and treat the reader to a wide-ranging analysis of our society."
-William Wulf, President, National Academy of Engineering

"After the endless, breathless hype about the information superhighway and how it will revolutionize society as we know it come two of America's leading technological thinkers who, in this calm and witty volume, point out that information is inevitably embedded in social relations. If you-like all of us-are living through the internet revolution, read this book"
-Robert D. Putnam, Stanfield Professor of International Peace, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

"Neither cheerleaders nor debunkers, these knowledgeable and reflective Silicon Valley insiders provide a much-needed critical perspective on the buzzwords, myths, and conventional wisdom of the digital revolution. Brown and Duguid convincingly argue that our future world is evolving from the complex interaction of powerful new technology with resistant existing structures and practices."
-William J. Mitchell, Dean, School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Author of City of Bits

"The Social Life of Information counters conventional wisdom by reminding us that information technology does not work unless supported by viable communities and institutions. Brown and Duguid argue that communication across distances increases the importance of place, and that the preservation of social knowledge and the art of practice are key to unleashing the economic promise of the new technologies. An artfully crafted and fascinating book that invites the reader to a conversation."
-Bruce Kogut, Felix Zandman Professor of International Management, The Wharton School of Business

"This important book provides both the layperson and the technologically adroit with a pragmatic yet visionary perspective on the profound role that information technology will play in reshaping our society and its institutions. By combining their extensive experience in computers and communications technology with an unusually broad understanding of how technology is developed and adopted by contemporary society, the authors provide a realistic yet provocative view of the future."
-James Duderstadt, President, Emeritus, and University Professor of Science and Engineering, The University of Michigan

"Fascinating and insightful. Experts Brown and Duguid argue convincingly that the context in which information is embedded is as important as the information itself. If information technology is to realize its promise, technologists must learn to take context into account."
-William H. Davidow, General Partner, Mohr, Davidow Ventures