ITM501cs1 – (5 to 7 pages
double spaced courier new 12 font and include reference page)
Information overload! The
phrase alone is enough to strike terror into the hardiest of managers; it presages the
breakdown of society as we know it and the failure of management to cope with change. The media constantly
dissect the forthcoming collapse brought
on by TMI (“Too Much Information”), even as they themselves pile up larger
and larger dossiers on the
subject, and we are frequently informed that it is our own damn fault that we are drowning in data, since we simply
can’t discriminate between the important
stuff and everything else. Hence, the info-tsunami warning signs posted all
along what we once so naively called the
“information superhighway”.
Of course, this is
arrant nonsense — human beings have been suffering from information
overload in varying forms since about the time
we hit the ground and found ourselves simultaneously running after the antelope and away from the lion.
There’s no question that the human
mind has a limited capacity to process information, but after several
million years we’ve gotten pretty good at
figuring out how to handle a lot. The two basic
tricks turn out to
be distinguishing between short-term and long-term information storage, and “chunking” — putting things in
a limited number of baskets. This isn’t primarily a course in the psychology of memory — it’s about information
tools and systems — but in fact
the same things that make our information tools and systems work are the same things that have kept us near the
antelopes and away from the lions (mostly)
for the last
million years or so. So we’re beginning this course by thinking about
information tools, what makes them like and
unlike other kinds of tools, how the concept of a socio-technical system (in which social and
behavioral functions shape results as much as does the technology itself) helps make sense of what we’re
facing, and why the technology
just might win after all.
Let’s start with a
little historical review. Amy Blair has recently done a very intriguing summary of just why information overload
isn’t something that we, or still less
our kids, dreamed up — people have been drowning in data for ages regardless
of the tools at their disposal:
Blair, A. (2010)
Information Overload, Then and Now. The Chronicle of Higher Education
Review. November
28. Retrieved November 15, 2010 from
http://chronicle.com/article/Information-Overload-Then-and/125479/?
sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
We thought we had
it all nailed down when the information theorists came up with their
typology distinguishing between “data”
(raw stuff), “information” (cooked stuff), and “knowledge” (cooked stuff that we’ve eaten).
This rather elegant approach did have the
virtue of
emphasizing that information processing is a human task, even though we might
delegate part of it to machinery, and that the
tests of that task are the results for humans. It helps return us to the perspective outlined in the module
introduction – that is, tools need
to be judged by what they do, not just what they are. Here’s a good brief
summary of this perspective:
Bellinger, G.,
Castro, D., & Mills, A. (2004) Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom.
The Way of Systems. November 15, 2010 from
http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm
But just when we
thought we had everything nailed down, the emerging technologies of
networking seemed to be blurring things a bit.
First, with so much stuff floating around, it’s not at all clear just how much
“cooking” is really involved in the data/information boundary; a lot of data turns out to be pretty
self-interpreting, and no matter how much we cook some of the stuff, it’s never going to be particularly
nutritious. In addition, it turns
out that information sometimes looks an awfully lot like property, so that the
kind of disembodied knowledge management
framework we thought was going to make things clear for us gets all tied up with personal
self-interest, organizational and social politics, generational conflicts, and all of the other fun things that
human beings have
teamed up to make
life difficult for one another over the years. Here is a useful introduction to this concern:
Green, P. (2010 ) Social Media Is Challenging
Notions of the Data, Information,
Knowledge, Wisdom
(DIKW) Hierarchy. CMS Wire. August 16. Retrieved November 25, 2010 from
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/social-media-is-challenging-notions-of-the-datainformation-knowledge-wisdom-dikw-hierarchy–008320.php
But now let’s put
this all in a bit of organizational context. As we noted in the module
introduction, the
language of socio-technical design can be very helpful in diagnosing
where systems are
going wrong, particularly when there appear to be disconnects between
the capacities of
the technology and the ability of the company to establish the right
kind of behaviorl
and procedures to take advantage of the tools. Here is a very useful
short introduction
to socio-technical design and how it can be used:
Liu, X. and Errey,
C. (2006) Socio-technical systems – there’s more to performance than
new technology. PTG
Global. Retrieved February 27, 2011, from http://www.ptgglobal.com/PDFArticles/Socio%20technical%20systems%20-%20There’s%20more%20to
%20performance%20than%20new%20technology%20v1.0.pdf
So how does all
this tie together? Well, we’ve got all this lovely data, information, and
maybe even knowledge floating around most
organizations, but we don’t seem to be able to make a lot of use of it. Either there’s just too much,
or we can’t identify relevant material
on a timely basis, or things fall between the organizational cracks. In any
event, we experience what amounts to
“information overload” on a pretty regular basis, despite having all this understanding of information
and some really good tools for managing
and using it. How come?
There’s a lot more out
there in the optional and supplemental readings as well as the wide wonderful world of the
Internet to give you a feel for whether or not we’re about to be washed away by the “info-tsunami”; the more widely
you can spread your own information gathering
net, the more effective your analysis is likely to be.
When you believe
you have a reasonable feel for how information tools do (or don’t)
manage an info-tsunami, you’ll be in a position
to write an effective short paper on the topic:
How taking a socio-technical perspective can be
more productive in helping organizations manage information overload than either technical solutions or
organizational solutions alone
Case assignment expectations:
Use information
from as many sources as you can, as long as it’s of good quality. At the
least, you are expected to show evidence of
having read and understood the required readings. Please cite all sources and provide a reference list at the
end of your paper.
LENGTH: 5-7 pages,
double-spaced.
The following
features of your paper will be assessed in particular:
··Your ability
to see what the module is all about and to structure your paper accordingly. In this case, there
isn’t a single right or wrong, yes-or-no answer
– either
perspective can be justified. Your task is to construct a logical,
well-reasoned, and persuasive argument for your
conclusions.
··Your ability
to consolidate ideas from reading materials and your understanding of the materials. Select your
illustrative cases to prove your point; don’t just dump a bunch of illustrations onto the page just to
fill space.
··Your informed
commentary and analysis — simply repeating what your sources say does not constitute an adequate
paper.
··Some in-text
references to your readings, with citations in proper academic format.
