Product Description
To see the future we can build with information technology, we must look beyond mere information to the social context that creates and gives meaning to it.For years pundits have predicted that information technology will obliterate the need for almost everything-from travel to supermarkets to business organizations to social life itself. Individual users, however, tend to be more skeptical. Beaten down by info-glut and exasperated by computer systems fraugh… More >>
The book arrived in time for my class. It’s in excellent shape and the price was more than fair!
Rating: 5 / 5
In reality exists a muddled world, ignoring (at their own risks) the dynamics of how people create ideas, disseminate those ideas, and recreate their own social and business fabrics. In reality, the short sound bite is king, and mapping and leveraging this dynamic is too ‘deep’ for most. Too bad for the species.
Sharing pithy stories of human foibles of this ilk, along with a couple of successes and so-called technical how-to’s, is always a nice read for a story in Wired. But very little of this tomb will help leverage the sentiency of the populace.
Perhaps the long priestly robes at PARC are hiding something far more dubious than just career paths. I have heard both of these gentlemen speak, and speak well (with pointed antidotes and metaphors) they do. But someone should have given them a reality read, and stopped them from drinking their own kool-aid.
I was expecting a whole lot more from both, and was sorely disappointed.
Rating: 1 / 5
It’s hard to fathom how such highly educated individuals, with access to tools, lots of time, and presumably intelligent colleagues, could come up with such a shallow analysis. They are pretty highbrow about it all too. Their storytelling is rehash. You could do better reading any technology business magazine and using your own interpretations of how technology changes will change our behavior. Your guess is probably better than what little you would find here.
Rating: 1 / 5
As a doctoral student working in the area of innovation management, I was pleased to see this work come out. It offers an opposing view to the futuristic, pie-in-the-sky hype associated with each successive wave of IT innovation. It is a book that is relevant and necessary, as the alleged promise of information technology has apparently caused individuals conversant with innovation management, diffusion of innovation, and the like to forget the fundamental principles underlying the diffusion of innovations. Not great, but a good critique.
Rating: 3 / 5
One of the best business books of the 1990s. Only now is the message getting heard.
Organizations and businesses cannot be programmed like computers. Installing technology has all sorts of complex repercussions for people, processes, & productivity – not all of them good. Makes a good argument that technology does not solve all problems. In fact, I/T creates many new problems when human & social factors are ignored. The latest upgrade is not your savior.
Rating: 5 / 5