Introduction
The conceptualisation of Information Systems (IS) as being an integration of people, process and technology has been around for over 50 years,1 yet from personal experience with organisational engagements the embedded assumption of IS equals technology is still ingrained in their fundamental conceptualisation of the domain. In fact, academics can have similar issues, as I have seen the simple request to define IS create quite a stir in an IS viva voce. However, the narrow technological view of IS serves only to make the use and exploitation of systems more difficult as it overemphasises the importance of technology over the human factor. This oversight precipitates a failure to recognise that technology will always do what its told (follow its programme) whereas people rarely do. In fact, the irrationality of human beings is becoming more understood in the context of areas such as economics (Kahneman, 2011), marketing (Ariely, 2008) and even sports (Peters, 2013). Most notably, the work of Daniel Kahneman (which won him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences) detailed a number of cognitive biases that leads to irrational decision-making. While his work was originally applied in economics, it can also be applied in the area of IS. For instance, biases such as risk and loss aversion, the endowment effect, status quo bias and the paradox of choice all impact on our decision-making capability when it comes to information systems. As a result, it can be argued that the notion of overlooking people in IS discussions will result in a limited output. Furthermore, taking direction from socio-technical theories such as Adaptive Structuration Theory (Desanctis and Poole, 1994), this discussion aligns with the notion that technology shapes us as much as we shape technology. Adaptive Structuration Theory also criticises the techno-centric view of technology use and emphasises the social aspects. For instance, it denotes that people/groups using technology dynamically create perceptions about the role and utility of the technology, and how it can be applied to their activities. While these perceptions can vary widely they strongly influence the way technology is used.
Taking this line of discussion, this chapter explores a number of perspectives on how technology is shaping us, both individually and as a society. A number of biases will be outlined, especially on whether we think technology is shaping us in a good way and if we think our technological future is going to be a good place for us as a society overall. The motivation for the chapter comes from a need to be mindful of the impact of technology and possibly get us to recognise our own biases and as a result help us make more rational decisions for the future. However, this mindfulness only comes about when we examine a wide spectrum of perspectives, from the contrarian to conformist, technophile to luddite, and utopian to dystopian. The output will be food for more fruitful discussions that will provide a more rounded view on the socio-technical nature of information systems. Moreover, these discussions will help provide a universal backdrop to the challenges facing AIS professionals in understanding future problems, designing/implementing future solutions, and evaluating the success of these solutions. Tangential as this discussion may sound to AIS, there is a consistent underlying message that if you lose your focus on people, you lose the most vital component of any IS, regardless of the discipline.
How technology is shaping us individually
To gauge how technology is shaping us individually, the use of generations is an effective method, as it enables the tracing of adaptations made as result of the influence of environmental changes. With each generation comes a set of new/different beliefs, abilities, outlooks on life and living that are shared among that generation. More importantly, with new generations arises a sense of opportunity and evolution but also a number of challenges to the status quo through as a result of jarring outlooks on life. Such clashes can be best viewed in large organisations which can have up to five different generations working together at any one time. For instance, in such environments you will have people that have yet to fully adopt email as a communication tool, whereas the newer generations tend to bypass email in favour of more mobile, social and open communication tools such as instant messaging. Given the importance of the medium of the message (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967), one can see the challenge that emerges when you try to connect to all generations.
Given the rise of technology and particularly the Internet, a new generation labelled as “Digital Natives” has come about, which details the common characteristics embodied by the individuals that have grown up in the digital era. Digital Native, a widely used term popularised by Prensky (2001) can be defined as an individual who has grown up in the digital era immersed in digital technology and is technologically adept (Bennett, 2012). Moreover, Digital Natives are described as digitally literate, highly connected, experiential, social and in need of immediate gratification (McMahon and Pospisil, 2005). A key characteristic of Digital Natives is that they do not resist technology and in particular the Internet. So much so that the Internet is an indispensable part of the fabric of their life and their norm is to be active participants and they are constantly connected (Ahern et al., 2016). In addition, Digital Natives have intertwined the digital world and its numerous technologies as part of their daily lives. For instance, ubiquitous digital connectivity can be seen in the indispensability of the Internet for Digital Natives (Vodanovich et al., 2010). More importantly, Digital Natives represent the first generation to grow up surrounded by information and communications technology.
While Digital Natives embody the adaptations to our digitally empowered world, not everybody perceives these adaptations in a positive light. In line with Sowell’s (1987) “Conflict of Visions”, which notes our disposition to have one of two totally opposing views on the nature of people, Tapscott (2009) outlined two very distinct views on Digital Natives (see Table 20.1). Mapping to Sowell’s dichotomy, on the one side you have the unconstrained vision that Digital Natives exemplify all that is good about how technology can make us better people by providing us with new skills and abilities to do things for the good of society. On the other hand, the constrained view provides a more self-gratifying vision that leads to laziness and indifference rather than productivity and engagement. Describing this dichotomy, the work of Tapscott (2009) conducted a comprehensive investigation that included a $4 million research project and interviewed nearly 6,000 Digital Natives from around the world, disseminating the results in over 40 reports. The two contrasting views on Digital Natives are now detailed, and some interesting insights were made within both the constrained and unconstrained view.
Table 20.1 Conflict of visions on Digital Natives
Constrained |
Unconstrained |
They’re dumb |
Smarter |
Socially inept |
Civically active |
No shame |
Customizers |
They steal |
Natural collaborators |
They don’t care |
Innovation expected |
Source>: Adapted from Tapscott (2009) and Sowell (1987)
Constrained
Digital Natives are dumb – it may be surprising to read there has been work done on the impact of the Internet on the way we read, learn and think. In Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows (2011), the argument put forward is that the Internet is changing the way we think and is supported by analysing brain scans of Digital Natives. The underlying view is that the Internet has enabled people to know about a lot of things as a substitute for knowing a lot about one thing.
Socially inept – the mass substitution of face-to-face communication with social networking tools such as: Facebook, SnapChat and Skype has created a perspective that Digital Natives are unable to socially interact with other human beings. A case in point is the sound of notification alerts replacing the sound of conversations around the dinner table. Moreover, the trend of recording and posting moments or events has become more of a priority than actually enjoying or living in the moment.
No shame – Digital Natives’ attitudes to sharing their lives through posts/pictures on social media has become a social norm. Moreover, this sharing often depicts the same Digital Natives in a less than favourable light – so much so that recruiters are actively using social networks to find out more about their potential candidates.
They steal – the rise of peer-to-peer networks and the use of bit-torrent services has seen a proliferation of copyright infringement across all types of digital media. There is almost the expectation that newly created digital products will be available for free regardless of the legal implications of sourcing the digital products from unofficial channels.
They don’t care – one of the key aspects of the constrained view is the lack of empathy for others. The actions of Digital Natives can be viewed as totally self-serving, with no appreciation of the impact of their actions on others. For instance, the notoriety of creating a viral post has often come at an unfair cost to unsuspecting people at the focus of the post. Such cases have a requirement for search engines to implement the “right to be forgotten” rule (in Europe) and delete any search results to such cases.
Unconstrained
Digital Natives are smarter – with ubiquitous access to information through smart devices and future AIS, Digital Natives can make better decisions. When deciding to buy a product or go to a movie, they can consult the opinions of hundreds of reviews or even a meta review on those reviews. Through the use of wearable devices, they now have the ability to create a dashboard from which they are more informed about how they live their lives. Through the utilisation of online educational resources, Digital Natives have been able to self-direct their learning outside of formal methods. One such resource, the Khan Academy has over 10 million unique users per month, which highlights the demand for online education by Digital Natives (SRI Education, 2014) .
Natural collaborators – the frictionless nature of the Internet and ease in which people can be connected makes it a perfect environment for collaboration. As a result, collaboration platforms that allow people to connect and collaborate to solve real problems are now common place in organisations. For instance, CrowdANALYTIX is one of the most recent platforms that focuses on data problems like predicting airline delays in the US. In addition, collaboration features are also becoming standard in AIS and Enterprise Systems.
Innovation is expected – one of the most striking characteristics of Digital Natives is their ability to adapt to new technologies. Living in a world where technology lifecycles are continually reducing while the number of new technologies are increasing, the new generation has come to expect disruption as the new norm. The rise of businesses such as Airbnb and Uber point to an appetite to disrupt current systems and value chains in favour of a more innovative solution.
They are keen customisers – just observe the multitude of creative pieces on Musical.ly to see how keen Digital Natives are on customisation. But while Musical.ly is an indication of their desire to customise, the real impact will come from the proliferation of 3D printers and resulting universe of designs and products. In addition, the open community are providing opportunities for Digital Natives to customise existing open-source products to a flavour that suits their needs.
They are civically active – the activity of Digital Natives in civic matters can be seen in the importance that political campaigns include a strong focus on social media channels. An indepth study on the use of social media and participation in civic matters (Boulianne, 2015) highlighted that while the data is inconclusive and hard to quantify the impact of social media, it did show that in general it “plays a positive role in participation”. Again one need only look at the use of social media in the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 and the Arab Spring in 2011 for evidence of this.
Bridging the gap
In contrast to Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants are those that were not born into a digitally connect world. Within accounting departments, we need to be mindful of the conflicts that arise between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Such conflicts will manifest in situations where Digital Natives will expect social media tools to aid communication, collaboration and ultimately support better productivity in their role. This may go against the views of their traditional counterparts, as social media may be perceived as primarily a social tool used only for gossip and sharing photos. As a result, AIS will have to bridge the needs of those two groupings, while taking the advantages of both outlooks and minimising any downsides. This sounds like a big task, but one such system that has been able to do this effectively is Slack. A tool for managing projects, at first glance it looks to be more suited to Digital Natives with an interface that is very similar to Twitter or Facebook. However, the more you delve into the system the more traditional communication features are included. Also, through the use of compliance, security and data retention features many of the risks associated (e.g. data loss, hacking and unauthorised access) with using a social media type system within an organisation are mitigated. Moreover, taking direction from this example, there is no reason why future AIS will not be able to harness the potential of this generation to the benefit of users and customers alike.
Another and possibly more robust solution is the implementation of Design Thinking when developing or embedding new IS. Design Thinking is a human-centred approach to solving problems which embraces integrative thinking, optimism, experimentation, collaboration and stakeholder empathy (Brown, 2008). Taking into the account multiple perspectives and being able to empathise with those perspectives is a key aspect that enables the development of solutions that better fit the people component of an IS. There is no doubt that differences will emerge from the way people see their world, but even the attempt of building a shared understanding between these perspectives will create a much more valuable output than if it was never attempted. Moreover, the tools and techniques needed to apply Design Thinking and build a shared understanding are very simple and straightforward. For instance, “Draw How to Make Toast” (DrawToast, n.d.) is an excellent example of how the human centred approach can be incorporated to systems design and problem-solving. Using similar techniques, inclusive, bottom-up solutions are developed that in my experience have a much stronger success rate.
How technology is shaping us as a society
Having looked at how technology is shaping us at a micro (individual) level, this section explores how technology is shaping us at a macro (societal) level. There are again many differing views presented, but to preface those views it is worth noting that we have for the most part become a society that accepts each technological juggernaut with a sense of optimistic adoption that each innovation is making our lives easier and better. Exploring these themes, two key social and economic affordances of technology are discussed (connectedness and productivity) with respect to the impact on us and our future as a whole.
Connectedness
One of the greatest benefits from technology has been our increased ability to communicate and connect with each other. The ability and hunger for conversation and communication is something that defines the human race. Thus, it is no surprise that we are constantly demanding more ways to connect and communicate with others through technology. However, the impact of the level of connectedness we have achieved has gone well beyond the increased facilitation of conversations to new economic realities in which the trade-off of richness and reach no longer applies. As a result, societies/organisations/groups can more easily be structured in the form of networks in contrast to hierarchies (Evans and Wurster, 1997).
This need to be connected is fully evident in the popularity of social media sites and massive amount of “friends” or “connections” that users amass through their profiles. The question arises if such a volume of friends is natural or even valuable? On the face of it, we seem to have more “friends” but studies have shown that loneliness is at epidemic levels and rising for both young and old. In addition, we have been described as living in an “age of loneliness” where loneliness is twice as deadly as obesity and as potent as smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Monbiot, 2014). In his research Dunbar (1992) suggests that humans can only support a limited number of relationships. That 150 number (the Dunbar Number) incorporates the number of people one knows and keeps social contact, and is linked to our cognitive ability or size of our neocortex. This number was further substantiated by the size of historic communities/settlements which tended to fall in line with that number. But if our cognitive limit is 150 and the average amount of connections or friends is well in excess of that number, is it a case of “our eyes being bigger than our bellies” as our hunger for connections outstrips our ability to make those relationships meaningful in any way? However, seminal research on these types of relationships – which labelled them as weak ties – did find that people benefited from the relationships (Granovetter, 1973, 1983). In his research, Granovetter found that people with more weak ties were able to secure employment much faster than those with fewer weak ties. This theory suggests that weak ties provide people with access to information and resources beyond those available in their own social circle. So in the case of searching for employment the weaker ties you have, the better chance you have of hearing about potential opportunities in the labour market. However, this does not diminish the value of strong ties as they have greater motivation to be of assistance and are typically more easily available. So while you may find it easier to get a new job through your weak ties, make sure you do not overlook your strong ties as they are more important for your overall wellbeing.
Since the rise of telecommunications, the notion of the global village has become a reality. Online communities are a core part of the Internet and have enabled likeminded people to collaborate to a level that is arguably more rich and efficient than face-to-face. There are three types of online communities: (1) socially constructed communities, (2) business sponsored communities and (3) volunteer orientated communities (Hunter and Stockdale, 2009). Socially constructed communities are built to support specific interests by providing information and support through community activities. Business sponsored communities are developed for the sole purpose of supporting a commercial entity. For instance, many tech companies now have a sponsored community for their customers to engage with other customers and solve common problems. Finally, there are the volunteer orientated communities that can be created by local groups for the likes of sport teams or global groups for wider issues like the environment. However, given this increased ability to connect and engage in communities there is a strong trend towards political polarisation across Europe and the US with particular division on views towards nationalism and keeping a national identity. As human beings we have an embedded need to be a part of a community, but we also strive to have our own individual identity. Has the drive for globalisation through technology overlooked the need to reinforce national identities? It is no wonder that we are losing our national identity when commercial organisations are spending billions on bombarding us with requests for engagement (preferably long term). It is not hard to imagine a future where the most important communities that we will be associated with will be the commercial brands we interact with. However, governments have this capability at their disposal also. The need to facilitate an engaged citizenship using the wide spectrum of technologies available has never been so apparent. While providing an open platform for debate, it also provides a means through which citizens can more effectively partake in their local and national governing bodies.
Productivity
In the early 1930s John Maynard Keynes, an economist whose work is still held in high regard, wrote the paper “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” (Keynes, 1933) which contained some interesting observations about the future they were facing at the time. Of particular interest are the observations on technology and its potential impact on the economy. Overall, Keynes painted a positive picture of the future role of technology as it would bring about greater productivity and enable people to have a 15-hour work week, as this would be enough to fulfil our economic needs. In addition, our needs would also be met with the abundant creation of almost free goods and services by automated machines, liberating our focus from economic necessities to more hedonic pursuits. With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to reflect on these observations on technology and make some inferences as to the economic possibilities of our grandchildren.
First off, it is evident that the 15-hour work week is not a reality. Tim Ferris (2007) did attempt to convey a path to the 4-hour work week, yet this has been viewed by some people as more of a fantasy or psychological tenet (the person that likes their work never works a day in their lives) (Clark, 2012). However, reflecting on the other aspects of his observation there are indications of an abundant supply of free goods and services, particularly information based goods and services. Since the 1990’s the marginal cost of producing, storing and delivering information has dropped to almost zero (Rifkin, 2014). A case in point is the book publishing industry, where Rifkin (2014) noted:
… a growing number of authors are writing books and making them available at a very small price, or even for free, on the Internet – bypassing publishers, editors, printers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. The cost of marketing and distributing each copy is nearly free. The only cost is the amount of time consumed by creating the product and the cost of computing and connecting online. An e-book can be produced and distributed at near zero marginal cost.
p. 4
Indeed, the World Wide Web itself is a free service that democratises access to information and further allows people access a huge range of other free services. However, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) still play a big part in the commercialisation of the majority of information services. The key argument for IPR is that it stimulates innovation as it provides incentive to invest in innovative ventures with the guarantee that any revenue from successful outputs will be protected, thus ensuring a return on investment. This is extremely important where R&D costs are substantial and the risks associated in bringing the innovation to market are high. On the other side, there is the view that IPR stifles innovation as it locks down the knowledge embedded in the innovative advancement and stops the proliferation of further innovation. To work around this obstacle, a number of open movements have developed: open-source software, open innovation, open data and more recently OpenStack (for cloud computing).
These movements have been about opening boundaries and making information/knowledge more accessible as they feel this is a fundament right of people. Underlying the philosophy of open-source software is the idea that as code is really just an expression of ideas, sharing these freely will accelerate the whole process. Everybody has benefited from previous innovations, as it is an iterative process and nobody develops their ideas in a vacuum. So, by making code open source, developers are also helping themselves. Also, it is not just software that has taken this approach. Jay Bradner from Harvard Medical School shared the invention JQ1 (a molecule created to treat a very rare type of cancer) to the world. He termed this strategy as Open Source Cancer Research in a Ted Talk back in 2011 (Bradner, 2011). This strategy is in contrast to that of a drug company that would have locked down the proprietary knowledge to extract all commercial value from the advancement. However, what Bradner found was that once shared they found out the molecule was effective in treating leukaemia and other cancers like multiple myeloma. The success of open strategies are not just anecdotal; in 2012 a study by Carlo Daffara estimated that open-source software was contributing €450 billion per year to the European economy (Daffara, 2012). Of that €450 billion, €114 was through savings, with the remainder coming from reinvestment of that saving. Such indications point to the potential demise of capitalism as it will be absorbed by the paradigm of the collaborative commons such as open-source software (Rifkin, 2014). However, with such a utopian view, Rifkin also mentions that capitalism is not going away anytime soon and the struggle with the collaborative commons is going to be hard fought and protracted between here and 2050.
Keynes in his paper also included the term “technological unemployment”, where automation would displace much employment in the short term but ultimately to our benefit in the long term. True to his prediction “technological unemployment” has taken place and is now beginning to eat away at the margins of knowledge workers. Presently, the roles of teachers, doctors, lawyers, authors, accountants and financial advisors are being eroded by automation. In particular, AIS are being developed to complete specific automated audits, while robo-advisors have certainly grabbed the attention of banks by encroaching on one of their key markets. Where this erosion is going to end is of course uncertain, but there are a number of ongoing discussions that give some indications as to the directions it may take us.
Tom Davenport and Julie Kirby provide an optimistic view, with these new technologies falling into the role of human augmentation. In their book Only Humans Need Apply (2016), they set out five strategies which provide an indication of how jobs will change in response to increasing automation. The five strategies include: (1) step in – humans master the details of the system, know its strengths and weaknesses and when it needs to be modified, (2) step up – humans examine the results of computer-driven decisions and decide whether to automate new decision domains, (3) step aside – humans focus on areas that they do better than computers, at least for now, (4) step narrowly – humans focus on knowledge domains that are too narrow to be worth automating, and (5) step forward – humans build the automated systems. Overall, the advice is to understand how computers make decisions and take actions in positioning your expertise. A more gloomier and stark outlook is given by Martin Ford (2015) in his book Rise of the Robots. Ford traces the optimistic view back to post-World War II (not too long after Keynes’s paper), when a virtuous cycle of technological unemployment was replaced with more productive jobs that demanded increased wages, which drove increased demand for new products and thus more high value jobs. However, this is not the case today as Ford observes (in the US economy) that over the last 40 years since 1973 the wages of a production worker have dropped by 13% while productivity has increased by over 100%. Also, more worrying is the fact that in the first decade of the 21st century there were zero new jobs created, highlighting a displacement of 10 million jobs that were supposedly needed to keep the economy ticking over.
Such a pattern also fits the impact of the Internet, as seen by Keen (2015) in which he posits our tendency to be blinded by the promise of democratisation, openness and a collaborative networked society but are ultimately sleepwalking into a world that is only fuelling huge inequalities. Such inequalities are best seen in the mass transfer of wealth that has taken place from the development of networked entities like Facebook and Google as they are heading towards trillion dollar valuations (LaMonica, 2016). These companies are very young in comparison to more traditional companies in that league and need a fraction of the amount of human capital to run them. Moreover, the nature of these entities means that they need a fraction of the human capital, which enables them to be highly scalable and efficient. It is staggering to think that Google is now generating over $1.2 million per employee, along with Facebook’s $1.4 million per employee, which is still well short of Apple’s $2.1 million per employee (Rosoff, 2016). If this trend is to continue, it seems that there are some very big but very few winners in the economy and society. Inequality will continue to widen and technological unemployment will become more of a long-term phenomenon, as opposed to the short-term inconvenience as describe by Keynes. What is also worth noting is that these companies do offer a host of free goods and services as Keynes described, but they are only free at a superficial level. In the case of companies like Google and Facebook, you are not really getting the goods for free as opposed to selling your data for free.
Final words
Rather than focusing on particular technologies, this chapter has purposefully focused on a wider socio-technical discussion. This should provide a balance to the deep discussions of specific AIS technologies and also provide a reminder of the wider trends that are happening in all IS domains. AIS as a domain is inextricably linked to the technologies that are continually transforming the way we work within organisations and live in society as a whole. To fully appreciate this, the discussion pushes beyond AIS to a certain extent. For instance, one discussion views technology as one of our defining characteristics or an extension of who we are. Whether this is a positive development, only the future will tell. To help us navigate these wider trends within AIS, this chapter serves to promote certain types of discussions and to constantly challenge ourselves on the merits of technology for us, now and in the future.
Note
1 First mention of people, process and technology can be traced back to Leavitt (1965) but was brought into the IS/IT by Keen (1981) and later refined in Keen, 1993.
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