Who designs all this stuff?
The expert labour behind the virtual
Richard Hull
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences,
Brunel University
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 1
Introduction
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The social sciences and computing, since earliest days
The variety of ICTs
In combination - a familiar problematic
One response - the conduct of expert labour
The conduct of computing - frameworks of computing
– Technical, Partnership and Benevolent frameworks
• Medical Informatics, Web Design and Knowledge
Management
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 2
The social sciences and computing
• Social sciences - economics, sociology, ergonomics,
anthropology, social psychology - have been an integral part of
the design of computing devices from the very outset
• But these involvements have been varied, not uniform. They do
not represent one single ideology, or anything like that, and
instead have come in a great variety of methodological,
philosophical and political styles.
• So, before adding to that plethora of social science comments
and analyses, perhaps we need to better understand those who
have been here before.
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 3
The limited variety of ICTs
• There is an increasing variety of ICTs, both hardware and
software, from digital watches to washing machine controllers,
from mobile phones to weather prediction, from missile
guidance to ‘Hactivism’
• However, one of the consequences of the prior social science
involvement in the design of ICTs is that we have to abandon
some of the favourite concepts for understanding them, like
‘information’ and ‘interaction’
• If, on the other hand, we accept that the variety is limited, and
that the possible uses and readings are limited - how can we
understand those limits?
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 4
In combination ...
• We now have a familiar problematic - changing historical
patterns of social science involvement in a set of
phenomena which manifest themselves in a limited variety
of ways. We see this problematic in, e.g. social work,
education, management and all its sub-functions like
accounting and HRM.
• The most useful perspectives - those which do not take
these phenomena at face value - are those which focus on
the disciplinary changes in expertise as new
problematisations emerge, and on the everyday activities
and practices of those experts.
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 5
The conduct of expert labour
• Redefine Conduct (Hull, 1999)
– ‘to lead others’ - the discipline of expert labour
– ‘a way of behaving’ - the practices of expert labour
• Discipline - the formal and informal social, institutional,
intellectual and artefactual arrangements for maintaining
and developing that form of expert labour
• Practices - variety of ways in which labour is regularised
and routinised, whether formally (tasks, etc) or informally
(‘getting by’, ‘getting the work done’)
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 6
Frameworks of computing
• Ways of understanding, working with and developing
software, artefacts and systems (Hull, 1997)
• Different understandings of the ‘real’ and desirable
relations between people and computers
• A descriptive device, rather than conscious decisions made
by practitioners
• Frameworks can co-exist within a discipline (e.g. HCI) or
a location (e.g. a research lab), or within an artifact (e.g.
the personal computer)
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 7
The technical framework
• Computers are logical machines: programming provides
input to them, based on logical and rational objectives,
requirements, analysis and design. These are based on the
assumption of rational human behaviour, both for
individuals and organisations
• Programs provide an accurate and unique representation,
that is immediately apparent to the rational user
• Information is totally definable as structured data;
knowledge is totally definable as information plus rules;
communication is merely the linear transfer of information
or knowledge
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 8
The partnership framework
• The computer is a useful partner, rather than a dominating or
dominated machine
• Humans derive information from each other in various different
ways, through interaction, and so they will derive information
from computers in various different ways, again through
interaction
• Thus one must study the characteristics of the individual ‘user’
and the ‘interface’ with the computer, so that the techniques and
artefacts of computing (development methods, VDUs, software,
etc) can be designed to suit these different but equal ways that
humans use computers
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 9
The benevolent framework
• Communication is a “social affair”, and social change will come
from changing the “control over the means of communication”
• Communication should be studied with a systemic rather than
linear approach - the focus on networks - and one should focus
on the uses of information and knowledge, rather than their
precise nature
• Knowledge is becoming a key resource
• Computer systems and networks are thus central to improving
communication and decision-making within organisations and
society
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 10
Medical Informatics
• Still far more dominated by the technical framework than other forms
of Information Systems Development
• That domination is slowly spawning resistance
– New models of Requirements Analysis, and iterative development
– Sub-disciplines, such as Healthcare Computing, developed by GPs
• But the dominant technical model still reflected at senior decision
making levels, for instance in the NHS and within most Medical
Informatics software companies
• In practice, designers engage in complex socio-technical activities
(Kaplan), but partly constrained by the disciplinary and institutional
limits of Medical Informatics, medicine and healthcare (Berg)
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 11
Web Design
• Hypertext a key feature of the benevolent framework, although
some early prescriptions for methods of hypertext design based
in partnership (Trigg) and technical frameworks (Thimbleby)
• Discussions of recent prescriptive methodologies for
hypermedia and web-page design reveal a rhetoric of moving
from a craft to an engineered, efficient process (Whitley). This,
of course, is exactly the rhetoric employed in the early years of
Systems Development methodologies.
• Again, in practice, web designers rarely stick rigidly if at all to
such methodologies, and in addition to active resistance in the
form of asserting their ‘creativity’ (Whitley), they deploy
various notions of audience and performance (Hine)
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 12
Knowledge Management
• A more complex genealogy for the emergence of this discipline
- concepts of ‘knowledge as a unit of analysis’ emerged in 1960s
and formed one aspect of benevolent framework; Information
Management emerged in early 1980s in opposition to traditional
forms of IT management, but was superceded by Business
Process Re-engineering; the problematisations of BPR failures
led to focus on ‘knowledge assets’.
• In practice, designers and others engaged in KM express
awareness of slippery, multi-faceted characteristics of KM;
relations between knowledge and power, especially for career
development; and in many senses are engaged in ‘practical
sociology of knowledge’ (Coombs & Hull, 1998; Hull, 1999)
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 13
Conclusion
• In all three cases, as with the other disciplines and activities I
have studied (HCI, CSCW, BPR, Information Management),
some features of the discipline provide a focus for either
conformity, critique or active resistance.
• Whilst studies of the everyday practices, and the effects of those
practices, are clearly important, they need to be placed in the
context of the specific features of the discipline or disciplines.
• Such a perspective is even more important if we are ever to be
able to discriminate between different ICTs, and different ways
of designing and implementing them - choosing which specific
ICTs and forms of design & implementation are preferable.
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 14
References
Berg, Marc (1997) Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision-Support Techniques and
Medical Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Coombs, R. & Hull, R. (1995) ‘BPR as ‘IT-enabled organisational change’: An
assessment’, New Technology, Work and Employment, Vol 10 (2), pp 121-131.
Coombs, Rod & Hull, Richard (1998). ‘‘Knowledge Management Practices’ and
Path Dependency in Innovation’, Research Policy 27(3): 239-255.
Coulouris, G. and Thimbleby, H. (1993) HyperProgramming: Building Interactive
Programs with HyperCard, Wokingham: Addison-Wesley.
Hine, Christine (2000) ‘Ideas of Audience in web page design’, presentation to the
‘Virtual Society? Get Real!’ conference, May 2000.
Hull, R. (1997), ‘Governing the Conduct of Computing: Computer Science, the
Social Sciences, and Frameworks of Computing’, Accounting, Management
and Information Technologies, Vol. 7 (4), pp 213-240.
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 15
References (2)
Hull, R. (1999), ‘Actor Network and Conduct: The Discipline and Practices of
Knowledge Management’, Organization, Vol. 6(3) pp 405-428
Kaplan, Bonnie (1997), “Addressing organizational issues in the evaluation of
medical systems”, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association,
Vol. 4, April-March, pp 94-101.
Thimbleby, Harold (1990) User Interface Design, Wokingham: AddisonWesley/ACM Press.
Trigg, R. H., & Irish, P. M. (1987). ‘Hypertext Habitats: Experiences of Writers in
NoteCards. In ACM Hypertext'87 Proceedings. New York: ACM Press, 89108.
Whitley, Edgar A. (2000) ‘Method-ism in practice: Investigating the relationship
between method and understanding in web page design’, Mimeo, London
School of Economics, Information Systems Department.
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 16
Berg, Marc (1997) Rationalizing Medical Work: Decision-Support Techniques and
Medical Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sociology
Department of Human Sciences
Brunel University
Richard Hull
Virtual Society? Get Real!
Brunel
May 4th 2000
Slide 17