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John Seely Brown

Paul Duguid

The Social Life of Information Paperback – February 15, 2002

by John Seely Brown (Author), Paul Duguid (Author)

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Argues that the technology of the information age cannot replace the social resources and networks that make learning, working, and innovating possible.

Print length

330 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harvard Business Review Press
Publication date

February 15, 2002
Dimensions

5.25 x 1 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

1578517087
ISBN-13

978-1578517084
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Selected as "One of the Best Books of 2000" by Strategy & Business, Harvard Business Review, Training & Development, and ForeWord Magazine

"As Brown and Duguid show, seeing the present clearly is far harder, but far more rewarding, than making grand pronouncements about it." -LA Times

"Deserves to be one of the best-read books of the internet age. It offers something far more valuable than a concluding soundbite: a common language for discussing the impact of technology on our workplace, our communities and our lives." -Financial Times

About the Author

John Seely Brown is the Chief Innovation Officer of 12 Entrepreneuring and the Chief Scientist of Xerox. He was the director of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) for ten years.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard Business Review Press; 1st edition (February 15, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 330 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1578517087
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1578517084
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 1 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,557,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,349 in Information Management (Books)
- #165,312 in Social Sciences (Books)

Customer Reviews:
58 ratings

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John Seely Brown
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John Seely Brown (JSB) is a visiting scholar and advisor to the Provost at University of Southern California (USC) and the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte’s Center for the Edge. Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)—a position he held for nearly two decades. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Education.
JSB is an avid reader, traveler and motorcyclist. Part scientist, part artist and part strategist, his views are unique and distinguished by a broad view of the human contexts in which technologies operate and a healthy skepticism about whether or not change always represents genuine progress.
His unofficial title has become Chief of Confusion focusing on helping people ask the right questions and make sense out of a constantly changing world.
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Paul Duguid
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Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
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Customer reviews

5 star		53%
4 star		16%
3 star		12%
2 star		10%
1 star		9%

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Max More

Important but overdone critique of info-enthusiasm

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2001

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Despite their protestations to the contrary, Brown and Duguid's book comes across primarily as a critical rather than constructive commentary. Not that this is a bad thing. Powerful criticism of warped thinking and its implementation in strategy and business processes can be highly valuable. The usefulness of this book's criticism of "info-enthusiasts" would have been heightened had the authors presented a clear, actionable framework for implementing their thoughts, but this is frustratingly lacking. Early on the authors target Alvin Toffler as a prime representative of those who see everything through the lens of information. This lens produces a tunnel vision that shuts out social practices and other aspects of life that the authors insist cannot be reduced to information. Toffler provides an ideal target, explicitly presenting his "6-D vision" of demassification, decentralization, denationalization, despacialization, disintermediation, and disaggregation. These six forces, according to Toffler, have been unleashed by information technology, and will break down society into its basic constituents of individuals and information. Whether or not the authors are overly harsh on Toffler, their book does a superb job of showing the shortcomings of an entirely infocentric view.
In eight chapters, Brown and Duguid explore the limits to information and to the reductive focus on it, the limitations of software agents or "bots", the mistakes in thinking that information technology means the end of the traditional location-based workplace, the dangers of re-engineering around information processes without considering social practices and communities, and the limitations of info-centric thinking about learning, organizational innovation and knowledge management, and education.
All of this is well worth reading and paying close attention to. Yet this reviewer got the feeling that the authors often set up straw men to more easily make their points such as taking the most extreme statements of information technologists and futurists then presenting them as universal views among those groups. In some places they weave their arguments out of flimsy material that makes for a good story rather than for solid evidence. For example, they tell the story of how the scent of vinegar on old paper revealed information not contained in the words themselves. The point is well made, but the reader is left wondering how broadly this applies and why the authors do not mention information technology that at least attempts to achieve similar results (such as versioning, and meta-commentary Web tags). Some of the shortcomings of the info-centric view may also result from the immaturity of the technology. Certainly the authors have strong points about the value of physical proximity, though many workers are already finding technologies that allow remote work, and as broadband and eventually virtual reality become pervasive, more of the social cues currently missing may return to our tech-mediated interactions. Overall, this is an important book that identifies a real problem in thinking. In an infotech-saturated world, the authors may be forgiven for going too far in the other direction.

Helpful

portolavalley

Mandatory for executives of all stripes

Reviewed in the United States on December 20, 2001

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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.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

David E. Rogers

The pitfalls of infocentricity

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2002

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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.

4 people found this helpful

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