Computerization and Controversy

963 Pages·1996·21.352 MB·English

Computerization
• and •
Controversy
2nd edition
Value Conflicts and Social Choices
Edited by
Rob Kling
Center for Social Informatics
Indiana University
14
Morgan
Kaufmann
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Preface
to the Second Edition
Public interest in information technologies was stimulated by the availabil
ity of relatively inexpensive personal computers in the 1980s. During that
decade most professionals in North America began using desktop comput
ers in their work, and North America's middle class began to buy micro
computers for use at home. Many personal computing enthusiasts argued
that these technologies would empower lower-level workers and could
improve many aspects of social life in North America. A smaller group
argued that new technology alone would be unlikely to improve the basic
character of worklife or community life.
These debates about the likely social roles of information technologies
were scattered through scholarly journals in diverse fields and in mass
magazines aimed at several distinct primary audiences. Many students,
professionals, managers, scholars, and laymen were hungry for honest,
probing discussions of the opportunities and problems of computerization.
Charles Dunlop and I edited and wrote the first edition of this book,
published in 1991, to help people understand many of the key debates and
to have pointers to some of the best systematic studies.
Since 1992, there has been a new burst of public interest and investment
in information technologies. It was stimulated by a combination of the
promotion of an advanced National Information Infrastructure ("informa
tion superhighways") by U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the opening of
access to the Internet to people who are not affiliated with special institu
tions such as universities, government agencies, and industrial research
laboratories. Public interest was also fueled by the efforts of telephone
companies, cable TV companies, and media companies to seize new mar
kets by promising new services and by trying to form high-profile multi-
billion dollar alliances with other firms. All of this talk about "the promise
of the new" gave journalists reams of material for thousands of often
enthusiastic stories. These stories also helped to heighten public awareness
of new possibilities in work, organization, and community life that could
be fostered by networked computer systems and on-line information ser
vices. As in the 1980s, the debates about information technologies and
social life are scattered through diverse journals and magazines so that few
readers will readily find the key materials without a substantial search.
Xlll
xiv Preface to the Second Edition
This critical anthology introduces some of the major social controversies
surrounding the computerization of society and highlights some of the key
value conflicts and social choices such computerization entails. A primary
purpose in bringing the various articles together is to help readers recog
nize the social processes that drive and shape computerization—and to
help them understand the resulting paradoxes and ironies. This approach
differs from the typical efforts of authors to provide one authoritative,
highly integrated account. My own viewpoint is reflected in the choice of
issues to emphasize and articles that examine them. I wrote a lead article
for each part of the book that provides an integrated overview and places
each article in context within the debates. These lead articles also identify
the ways that specific other selections that appear within other parts of the
book also contribute to the debates at hand.
This edition of Computerization and Controversy differs from the first
edition by including a larger number of articles, as well as many articles
that focus on current issues and contexts as they appear in the mid-1990s.
While most of the articles from the first edition are still important today,
many readers will find the second edition more accessible because the
newer articles speak more directly to and focus on technologies that they
use.
This quest for articles that focus primarily on technologies that readers
work with is a mixed blessing. Many readers will find articles accessible
when they discuss the technologies and contexts that they know best. But
many information and computer professionals evaluate the appropriate
ness of a book or article to the extent that it addresses the concrete family
of technologies or industrial settings of their immediate interest.
In this approach, professionals who are interested in a topic such as
artificial intelligence focus on materials that explicitly examine artificial
intelligence; those who are interested in computer applications in medical
care focus on studies of health care computing. I believe that such assess
ments are often too narrow, because many key social aspects of com
puterization that arise with one technological family or industry have
important parallels with other technological families or social settings.
Professionals who value this kind of professional provincialism are also
likely to underestimate the relevance of studies that are more than a few
years old. Unfortunately, they can sacrifice access to a usable professional
past by focusing on their excitement about newer technologies which have
a smaller body of studies about them to draw upon.
In organizing Computerization and Controversy, I have taken a cosmopol
itan approach in helping readers understand the ways that key debates
crosscut specific technologies and industries. This collection examines
controversies that are pertinent to many kinds of computer technologies
and social settings, such as the following:
Preface to the Second Edition xv
• How appropriate are technologically Utopian and anti-utopian scenar
ios for understanding the future?
• Does computerization demonstrably improve the productivity of or
ganizations?
• Should computer systems be designed to empower workers?
• How do computer system designers often ignore the complexity of
women's work?
• How can computerized system designs incorporate social principles?
• Does electronic mail facilitate the formation of new communities, or
does it undermine intimate interaction?
• Is computerization likely to reduce privacy and personal freedom?
• What risks arise from computerized systems in health care?
• How concerned are industrial-application computer science research
ers about the social consequences of the technologies they develop?
This second edition includes seventy-eight articles that examine the
social aspects of computerization from varying perspectives. Some articles
are paired to present a head-on debate. Many represent important view
points not often found in the conventional literature. The authors include
scholars and professionals in computer science, information systems, man
agement, journalism, psychology, law, library science, and sociology. Each
of the book's eight parts is introduced with a lead article that frames the
major controversies, locates the selections within the debates, and points to
other relevant literature. These lead articles share little with the lead articles
of the first edition. I have restructured and rewritten each lead article to
effectively integrate key ideas from the new articles and to build upon
recent scholarly and professional studies. The result is basically a new book
rather than a revised book.
Rob Kling
Irvine, California
October 1995
Preface
to the First Edition
Computer systems comprise one of the most distinctive and complex
technologies of the late 20th century. In a short span of time, these systems
have become ubiquitous. Many of our transactions with organizations
are mediated by computer systems, as is reflected in bills, payments, and
record-keeping. Commercial jets and advanced weapons systems depend
upon sophisticated, computerized navigation systems. Interactive com
puter systems have become standard equipment in many professions, from
the sciences to journalism, and are increasingly appearing in schools at all
levels. The meteoric spread of computerization has spawned a large in
dustry that is beginning to rival the automobile industry in importance.
Typically, discussions of rapidly improving computer equipment (and
its rapid adoption in organizations and professions) are accompanied by
excitement and by high hopes for social and economic improvement.
Moreover, the public discussion about computers, as reflected in profes
sional journals and popular media, is generally upbeat. To be sure, there
are occasional observations about "computer screwups" that lead to mas
sive billing errors, 1 a blackout of telephone services,^ or the short-term
tragedy of a hapless person who learns when she applies for Social Security
that her records show her to be deceased (Kiger, 1987). But situations like
these are usually treated as idiosyncratic: amusing for bystanders, they will
soon be fixed for those who have been harmed or inconvenienced.
We have produced this book because we see the world of computeriza
tion in radically different terms. We see computer systems not only as
^ In the fall of 1989, for example, 41,000 Parisians received letters accusing them of various
crimes (murder, prostitution, drug-dealing, etc.) and demanding the payment of a small fine.
The addressees should have received letters reminding them of unpaid traffic tickets, but
apparently the codes for traffic offenses got mixed up with the codes used for other illegal
activities. Officials issued 41,000 letters of apology. (RISKS-FORUM Digest, 9 (22); also. The
Guardian, September 6, 1989.)
^ A major telephone blackout occurred on January 15, 1990, when a software flaw in
AT&T's long-distance switching system caused serious degradation of the company's long
distance service for approximately nine hours. For a popular media account of this event, see
the Newsweek article, ''Can We Trust Our Software" (January 29, 1990, pp. 70-73); more
technical discussion may be found in RISKS-FORUM Digest, 9 (63, 64, 66, 67).
xvii
xviii Preface to the First Edition
powerful technology, but also as a powerful factor in social change. Vari
ous groups advance visions of computerization in many settings, from
workplaces to the networking of nationwide financial operations. Their
visions are designed to serve particular interests and sometimes to restruc
ture parts of society (albeit not always in ways that are anticipated). Since
computerization usually requires that social practices be altered (and may
even facilitate altering them), it is a subtle but important catalyst for social
transformation. While there has been far too much hype about the "com
puter revolution," it is important to understand how computer systems
are becoming a pervasive element of organizations and how they affect the
way in which people deal with those organizations. Furthermore, many of
the opportunities and dilemmas of computerization are systematically
connected, even though the key issues are often separated in writings that
emphasize either hope or doom.
In our General Introduction, we will explore various ways in which the
spread of the automobile in the United States provides a provocative
analogy for understanding computerization. Cars have transformed urban
America, enabling us to be a much more mobile nation and to live in larger
lifescapes. At the same time, cars congest our cities, dirty our air, kill
thousands of people annually, and consume immense amounts of space,
fuel and money. To understand the role of automobiles in altering society,
we must examine whole transportation systems not just individual com
ponents like this year's hottest high-performance car. While some of the
problems engendered by the automobile can be reduced by technological
improvements, many others cannot be reduced without a substantial re
organization of cities, suburbs, and the lifestyles of millions of people.
Cars and computers are both devices that have been parts of large-scale
social changes. Their advantages and disadvantages often show up only in
social contexts (the high-performance car can't drive fast or far in a large
city with dirt roads and no gas stations; a car may be an advantage in New
York's suburbs but a liability in downtown Manhattan). With cars so firmly
entrenched in our social fabric, many of the associated social choices are
now limited. But in the case of computers and the organizational systems
built around them, important social options are still open.
We have found that many students, professionals, managers, and lay
persons are hungry for honest, probing discussions of the opportunities
and problems of computerization. This book introduces some of the major
social controversies about the computerization of society. It also highlights
some of the key value conflicts and social choices about computerization.
It aims at helping readers to recognize some of the social processes that
drive and shape computerization and to identify some of its paradoxes and
ironies.^
^ One simple irony of the microcomputing industry is that IBM, which has been accused of
monopoly practices in the mainframe business, has spawned a dynamic industry of firms that
Preface to the First Edition xix
Many books and articles about computerization focus on emerging or
future technologies, such as computers that recognize speech, rely on
writing tablets rather than keyboards, or pack the power of a Mac II or '486
PC into a pocket-sized notebook (Moravec, 1988). Other writings focus on
social practices that depend upon major advances in computing—e.g., a
cashless society or one in which children get expert instruction at home
through exceptionally high-quality educational software. During the 1990s
we expect to see an endless stream of publications that emphasize the
potential of 21st-century computer technologies to alter our social worlds.
We share a concern with the quality of life, and our interest in novel
technologies reaches well past the year 2000. But we expect that most of
these books and articles are likely to characterize computerization and
social change inaccurately.
For two main reasons, we focus primarily on the present and near future.
First, many people do not understand how and why individuals and
organizations computerize today. Since computerization involves a great
deal of human behavior, future speculations are useless if they cannot
account for contemporary behavior except in technological terms (e.g., by
claiming that most people won't feel comfortable with computerized sys
tems until they interact with spoken language). This important point is
easily obscured by the steady march of technological innovation. For
example, an IBM PC clone with a 80286 processor, or an Apple Macintosh
II, computes as fast as a large room-sized IBM mainframe of the late 1960s.
Today's microcomputers are much cheaper, can fit on a desk, and are used
by millions of people for activities that were very rarely carried out on
computers in the late 1960s (e.g., text processing, spreadsheets, and
computer-assisted graphic design). Widely available desktop computing
was a future scenario of the 1970s. Yet, impressive though these techno
logical facts are, they do not provide an immediate route to accurate social
analysis. Many visionaries have argued that broad access to desktop com
puting will empower workers, make organizations more flexible, and make
work less deadening for many employees in routine jobs. Other visionaries
see the extensive computerization of work as an occasion for imposing rigid
assembly-line disciplines in offices—disempowering workers, fragmenting
jobs, reducing skill levels, and increasing the number of deadening jobs.
make IBM clones and compatible equipment. It is arguable that microcomputers spread
rapidly in the 1980s because of the price drops and technological improvements fostered by
this competitive environment. In contrast, the Apple Computer Corporation, which positions
itself as the "computer company for the rest of us,'' has a monopoly on the architecture of its
microcomputers. Apple has blocked the development and marketing of Mac clones. Another
example is the way in which laser printers have become major fixtures in the development of
the ''paperless office." Deeper ironies come from the way that computers are often portrayed
as an instrument of rationality but can be the focus of nonrational management and prob
lematic social practices.
XX Preface to the First Edition
These are important yet conflicting predictions that are worth understand
ing. Nevertheless, we would be dismissing many important insights about
how information technologies are shaped by their adopters and how they
do (and do not) change social practices if we assumed that computerization
would not really effect important changes until even more advanced (21st-
century) technologies were widely available.
Our second reason for focusing on computerization in the present and
near future is that people and organizations today are making social choices
about how to organize with computerized systems—systems that can alter
social life as powerfully as automobiles had altered social life by the 1950s.
Our analogy between computers and automobiles will suggest that major
social choices are made when a technology, even one that is relatively
crude in its early phases, is widely deployed. For example, the legal
regulations supporting debit cards give consumers much less protection in
cases of theft, loss, or error than do the corresponding regulations for credit
cards or checks. Computerization presents many important social choices
to be made now, and some of them will restrict our social options in the
21st century.
Because of constraints on length, we have not addressed all the topics
that we would like to have covered in this book.'* To economize on space,
we have incorporated some themes, especially those of gender and sys
tems design, into sections with other major themes (e.g., work), instead of
providing them with their own special sections. And since many of our
topics are interrelated, we have often discussed articles from one section in
our introductions to other sections. In our various introductory essays, we
have also discussed many books and articles beyond those which we have
collected here, our aim being to help link key ideas to a larger literature
about the social issues of computerization.
Some of our topics have large literatures; others have small literatures.
For example, there are many studies of computerization in the contexts of
work, future educational opportunities, and privacy, but there are rela
tively few studies of the health effects of computing, the risks to the public
from unreliable computer systems, or the current roles of instructional
^ For example, we have omitted a section on computerization in the military and war,
because the topic is well covered in the book edited by Bellin and Chapman (1987). In order
to allow adequate space for other topics, we have excised a section on computers in schooling
and another on ways in which computer-based systems alter organizational decisions. For
simplicity, our book is focused on the United States. Many of the major controversies are also
salient in other industrialized countries, although their legal systems, social traditions, and
industrial structures alter the details of key social choices. We have virtually ignored contro
versies of computerization that are pertinent to developing countries (e.g., dependency on
complex technologies and first-world suppliers; social stratification and urban-rural econo
mies). And we have not discussed the ways in which computer modeling of complex social
phenomena (e.g., population change or economic systems) can have a drastic impact on social
policy choices.
Preface to the First Edition xxi
computing systems in schools. Moreover, the literatures are diffuse. Key
articles are published in the professional journals of computer scientists,
philosophers, sociologists, political scientists, educators, lawyers, and
managers, as well as in popular magazines.
We have collected articles from diverse sources that might not be readily
accessible in many libraries. In addition, we have included several articles
that were written especially for this book. While our selections are eclectic,
the majority of our articles emphasize social science approaches to under
standing computerization, rather than approaches anchored in future stud
ies, technological forecasting, or fiction.^ We see computerization as com
prising a set of social phenomena, and we believe that the social sciences
offer a uniquely important vantage point from which to understand them.
We have tried to select readings that would be intelligible to people
without an advanced background in any specific academic discipline,
although our introductory essays have often drawn upon, and interpreted,
more sophisticated and technical studies. (We have also provided refer
ences to such studies for readers who want to pursue specific topics in
greater depth.) Our introductions provide definitions of terms that may be
unfamiliar but whose meaning is presupposed in a selection. We recom
mend that you read the footnotes—in both our introductions and our
selected articles—because they often contain important supplementary
ideas.
In choosing our articles, our aim has been to help articulate different
sides of key debates and to stimulate further inquiry. Only a small fraction
of authors carefully identify major alternative positions in the controversies
about which they take sides. We could have saved ourselves a great deal
of labor by "letting the articles speak for themselves." Instead, we have
attempted to make the key controversies much more accessible through
integrative introductions to each section and through leads to related books
and articles. Since the literature on computerization is large and widely
scattered, we hope that our suggestions for further reading will help
readers find useful lines of inquiry and to discover authors and publica
tions that might otherwise have passed unnoticed.
Each of this book's major sections contains an introduction designed to
help frame the debates about a topic. We explain how the section's articles
relate to the larger literature about computerization and to each other. We
also try briefly to create a social context that amplifies the meanings of the
selections. At various points, we comment critically on some of the selec-
^ Short-stories, plays, and novels can, of course, play an important role in helping us
understand the ways in which new technologies can alter social life. For example, George
Orweirs novel 1984 helped many people understand how a politically repressive regime could
use information technologies to retain power. And it put terms like "Big Brother'' and
''newspeak'' into everyday language. But we have attempted to focus the central debates by
staying within a single genre.