Does digital technology extinction mean it's time for a new research tribe?
In the January 26, 2013 issue of The Economist, there was an interesting story about technological extinction. Technologies like carbon paper seem to keep hanging on; nowadays tattoo artists and pigeon racers make use of it. But on the other hand, the article argues that many digital technologies just flat out die off forever. Based on this premise, are the myriad has-been digital technologies akin to extinct life forms? Would that make those who intertwined their lives or livelihoods with extinct digital technologies the members of a lost tribe?
By Michael Goul, Chairman, Department of Information Systems
In the January 26, 2013 issue of The Economist, there was an interesting story about technological extinction.
Technologies like carbon paper seem to keep hanging on — the article makes the case that nowadays tattoo artists and pigeon racers make use of it. But on the other hand, the article argues that many digital technologies just flat out die off forever: “… digital technologies may prove to be more ephemeral than their predecessors. They are based on the idea that the medium on which a file’s constituent 1s and 0s are stored doesn’t matter, and on Alan Turing’s insight that any computer can mimic any other, given enough memory and time. This suggests that new digital technologies should be able to wipe out their predecessors completely.”
Based on this premise, can we expect to hear anthropologists talking about a has-been digital technology as if it were an extinct life form? And about those who intertwined their life and/or livelihood with an extinct digital technology possibly being members of a lost tribe?
Hanging an albatross like extinction around the neck of digital technologies is unnerving. It had me pondering what that might mean about research involving digital technologies in disciplines ranging from computer engineering to computer science and to information systems (IS). Does digital technology research become extinct? Is quick extinction actually desirable from an evolutionary perspective? I decided to check into some research on IS research to provide some insights.
Around 10 years ago, one IS scholar who visited ASU spoke of taking an anthropological perspective on the state of IS research. Professor Allen Lee of Virginia Commonwealth University also had written a 2010 piece in the Journal of Information Technology titled, “Retrospect and prospect: information systems research in the last and next 25 years.” In it, he characterizes two perspectives – one view being that of a ‘native’ (a member of the community of IS researchers who is addressing other members of the community) and the other view of an ‘outside observer.’ This latter view is much like that of an anthropologist conducting research on natives.
I will not do Lee’s paper the justice it deserves in this short paragraph, but he asserts, taking an outsider’s vantage point, that change must come to IS research. He cites the disciplines of medicine, engineering, architecture and law as being suggestive of a path to take to change IS research in the next 25 years.
Lee posits that IS research doesn’t need to be like that traditionally associated with natural sciences — it can take the perspective of what Herb Simon called a ‘science of the artificial.’ Lee offers a prescription for research inquiries to “regard their phenomena of interest to be human artifacts that have yet to be produced, whether physical objects (what engineers and architects create) or … social objects (e.g., what lawyers and accountants create). For the sciences of the artificial, the first and foremost requirement of knowledge is its efficiency and effectiveness for bringing into existence an artifact needed to solve a given problem, achieve a given goal, or otherwise fulfill a given need that is facing people in the real world.” Lee states there is an opportunity for nations where IS research is young because they “need not be beholden to the strictures of ‘old world’ ideas and institutions.”
Lee ventures that what is dysfunctional about IS research in the west can be left behind; what works can be retained, and new research traditions can be innovated.
As one might expect, there was disagreement within the tribe about what Lee prescribed. Mats Lundeberg, Richard L. Baskerville, Robert M. Davison and Chrisanthi Avgerou wrote dedicated commentaries regarding the piece. Some extensions were suggested, some disagreed with premises and conclusions, and some highlighted areas of general agreement.
One point that Davison made about the research of Anne Tsui caught my eye: “[Tsui] wrote that that there is an urgent need to identify ‘the issues that are unique or at least important to Chinese firms, managers, employees, even if such phenomena might be foreign to scholars outside this context.’ A focus on these indigenous issues would constitute an emic approach to research. By thus plunging into the sea rather than fishing from the shore, researchers can ensure that they identify relevant issues in the local context and subsequently develop new, or adapt existing, theory relevant to organizations in that context. Potentially, these new or adapted theories would also have a wider relevance — if nothing else, they should stimulate reflection by researchers outside the immediate context.”
So now we’re in 2013, and the question about Lee’s (and the commentary authors’) insights could well be, “Well, how is that going for you?”
Paulo B. Goes wrote in his first editorial comments for MIS Quarterly, “We are living through a period of time in which, for the first time and concomitantly, exponential growth is driving advances in processor speed, network bandwidth, and storage ... As IS researchers, we are positioned very well to ‘arrive at the scene early.’ We are trained to connect the dots, and are able to identify the phenomena of interest before other disciplines. We have to make sure we are the first to own the new phenomena, address the significant problems, and make relevant contributions. With the pace of technology change, we are fortunate to always have interesting problems to work on.”
So it seems the tribe is alive and well and has embraced digital technology extinction. But there is one interesting phenomena in all of this extinction discussion that my colleague, Bob St. Louis, pointed out to me today. The device upon which you viewed a picture that you regret you posted online many years ago has long ago been recycled, but that darn picture probably remains somewhere out there. Without digital technology, that picture would probably be long gone and forgotten. Maybe there is something more at play than what The Economist has espoused.
In the January 26, 2013 issue of The Economist, there was an interesting story about technological extinction.
Technologies like carbon paper seem to keep hanging on — the article makes the case that nowadays tattoo artists and pigeon racers make use of it. But on the other hand, the article argues that many digital technologies just flat out die off forever: “… digital technologies may prove to be more ephemeral than their predecessors. They are based on the idea that the medium on which a file’s constituent 1s and 0s are stored doesn’t matter, and on Alan Turing’s insight that any computer can mimic any other, given enough memory and time. This suggests that new digital technologies should be able to wipe out their predecessors completely.”
Based on this premise, can we expect to hear anthropologists talking about a has-been digital technology as if it were an extinct life form? And about those who intertwined their life and/or livelihood with an extinct digital technology possibly being members of a lost tribe?
Hanging an albatross like extinction around the neck of digital technologies is unnerving. It had me pondering what that might mean about research involving digital technologies in disciplines ranging from computer engineering to computer science and to information systems (IS). Does digital technology research become extinct? Is quick extinction actually desirable from an evolutionary perspective? I decided to check into some research on IS research to provide some insights.
Around 10 years ago, one IS scholar who visited ASU spoke of taking an anthropological perspective on the state of IS research. Professor Allen Lee of Virginia Commonwealth University also had written a 2010 piece in the Journal of Information Technology titled, “Retrospect and prospect: information systems research in the last and next 25 years.” In it, he characterizes two perspectives – one view being that of a ‘native’ (a member of the community of IS researchers who is addressing other members of the community) and the other view of an ‘outside observer.’ This latter view is much like that of an anthropologist conducting research on natives.
I will not do Lee’s paper the justice it deserves in this short paragraph, but he asserts, taking an outsider’s vantage point, that change must come to IS research. He cites the disciplines of medicine, engineering, architecture and law as being suggestive of a path to take to change IS research in the next 25 years.
Lee posits that IS research doesn’t need to be like that traditionally associated with natural sciences — it can take the perspective of what Herb Simon called a ‘science of the artificial.’ Lee offers a prescription for research inquiries to “regard their phenomena of interest to be human artifacts that have yet to be produced, whether physical objects (what engineers and architects create) or … social objects (e.g., what lawyers and accountants create). For the sciences of the artificial, the first and foremost requirement of knowledge is its efficiency and effectiveness for bringing into existence an artifact needed to solve a given problem, achieve a given goal, or otherwise fulfill a given need that is facing people in the real world.” Lee states there is an opportunity for nations where IS research is young because they “need not be beholden to the strictures of ‘old world’ ideas and institutions.”
Lee ventures that what is dysfunctional about IS research in the west can be left behind; what works can be retained, and new research traditions can be innovated.
As one might expect, there was disagreement within the tribe about what Lee prescribed. Mats Lundeberg, Richard L. Baskerville, Robert M. Davison and Chrisanthi Avgerou wrote dedicated commentaries regarding the piece. Some extensions were suggested, some disagreed with premises and conclusions, and some highlighted areas of general agreement.
One point that Davison made about the research of Anne Tsui caught my eye: “[Tsui] wrote that that there is an urgent need to identify ‘the issues that are unique or at least important to Chinese firms, managers, employees, even if such phenomena might be foreign to scholars outside this context.’ A focus on these indigenous issues would constitute an emic approach to research. By thus plunging into the sea rather than fishing from the shore, researchers can ensure that they identify relevant issues in the local context and subsequently develop new, or adapt existing, theory relevant to organizations in that context. Potentially, these new or adapted theories would also have a wider relevance — if nothing else, they should stimulate reflection by researchers outside the immediate context.”
So now we’re in 2013, and the question about Lee’s (and the commentary authors’) insights could well be, “Well, how is that going for you?”
Paulo B. Goes wrote in his first editorial comments for MIS Quarterly, “We are living through a period of time in which, for the first time and concomitantly, exponential growth is driving advances in processor speed, network bandwidth, and storage ... As IS researchers, we are positioned very well to ‘arrive at the scene early.’ We are trained to connect the dots, and are able to identify the phenomena of interest before other disciplines. We have to make sure we are the first to own the new phenomena, address the significant problems, and make relevant contributions. With the pace of technology change, we are fortunate to always have interesting problems to work on.”
So it seems the tribe is alive and well and has embraced digital technology extinction. But there is one interesting phenomena in all of this extinction discussion that my colleague, Bob St. Louis, pointed out to me today. The device upon which you viewed a picture that you regret you posted online many years ago has long ago been recycled, but that darn picture probably remains somewhere out there. Without digital technology, that picture would probably be long gone and forgotten. Maybe there is something more at play than what The Economist has espoused.
Latest news
- Second annual Inclusive Excellence Research Summit examines inclusivity in business, health, and the arts
Speakers from ASU gathered to discuss their research in accessibility and innovation.
- Business owners are warily stocking their inventories
An ASU supply chain expert discusses how businesses are approaching uncertainty around how the…
- Picnic Development wins 2024 REIAC/Rockefeller Group Challenge
W. P.