Informate (fwd)

[KWABENA DONKOR]

To Mike and the list,
Mike wrote:
> (1) Is informating real or is it just another fad promulgated by a
> management guru?
> (2). Has anyone conducted studies designed to confirm or refute the notion
> of informating?
> (3). Does anyone know of anyone who has studied this phenomenon
> of informating empirically?

I haven't read Hugh's review of Zuboff, but this is my penn'orth:
One of the (many) problems with Zuboff's notion is that 'automate'
and 'informate' are incommensurable concepts. 'Automate' seems to me
to be a verb (at least, in labour process vocabulary, and I think
this is the sense in which Zuboff is using it), that is, an activity
conducted by humans (but later anthropomorphically also assigned to
machines - a serious linguistic error, perhaps). 'Informate', on the other
hand, as Zuboff describes it, seems to be more of a tendency, something
that happens in organisations, with a vague assignation to both IT and
the people within the organisation. And, moreover, a tendency that
isn't itself well-defined, except in <<opposition>> to 'automate'.

Can you seriously imagine a person trying to 'informate'?

Unless, that is, one redefines 'informate' to merely mean "inform
electronically, to send information to a group of people
electronically" or even, "to place information in an electronic form
such that it is available to many other people". In which case the
studies you are looking for date back to the earliest studies of
computer mediated communication (1964 - though it wasn't called CMC
then) and many, many such similar studies since then. But then of
course - what is the precise difference between 'electronic
communication' and 'data processing' or many other forms of
computing? Are we taking into account the <<relative ease>> with
which other people can access the electronic information, or data, or
communication? These are some of the other problems with Zuboff's
work. In addition, it seems to me that Zuboff was attempting, for no
doubt well-intentioned motives, to create a phenomenon
which she believed was 'good' - by inventing the concept of
'informate' she was to some extent summarising previous
social-psychological and computing research which suggested
that CMC had particular effects on groups. She believed those
effects to be 'good', in opposition to the 'bad' effects of
automation. By inventing the concept of informate as being
qualitatively different from automate, she created a 'good'
phenomenon, and then urged people to do things that would reinforce
this 'good' phenomenon. This of course begs the question of 'should
anyone take it upon themselves to dictate what is a 'good'
phenomenon?
Regards,
Richard
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Richard Hull, CRIC & CROMTEC
Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition
Tom Lupton Suite, University of Manchester Precinct Centre
Tel: +44 (0)161 275 7364
Centre for Research on Organisations, Management & Technical Change)
Manchester School of Management, UMIST
PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK
Tel: +44 (0)161 200 3401 Fax: +44 (0)161 200 3622
email: richar...@umist.ac.uk
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