science

The Social Life of Information

The Social Life of Information is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Social Life of Information rather than just read about it. In short: The Social Life of Information is a 2000 book by John Seely Brown (the former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and director of Xerox PARC) and Paul Duguid (Adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information), which discusses recently developed practices in the transmission of information in social and business contexts. The authors argue that information technology needs to be considered in a broad conte…

Key takeaways

The Social Life of Information belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Social Life of Information to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Social Life of Information from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Social Life of Information is a 2000 book by John Seely Brown (the former Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and director of Xerox PARC) and Paul Duguid (Adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information), which discusses recently developed practices in the transmission of information in social and business contexts. The authors argue that information technology needs to be considered in a broad context that includes the entirety of society and social resources, in contrast to the narrow focus on information that tends to be the framework of such technology – what the authors criticize as "tunnel design". That is, increased technological delivery of information does not in and of itself contribute to a better future. The text, in part, analyzes examples of the office world's adoption of technology, offering a differentiated rather than an unquestioningly affirmative view of the effects.

User agents Serving as an early example of the ambiguous utility of software to human, the authors discuss software known as autonomous agents which manipulate information. Different forms of such agents include information broker, product brokering, merchant brokering, and negotiation. The authors use an example of information brokering using the Macintosh program named Sherlock that searched for the word "knobot" via the Internet. Product brokering would be an example of an online bookstore sending a person an email about a book for sale based on the previous types of books the customer bought. Merchant brokering, now widely practiced, consists of finding the best price for a product. For example, eBay allows users, not necessarily in the same location, to buy new, used, or refurbished products through an auction, at a fixed price, or through negotiation. This book has been republished in 2002 with a new introduction, by the Harvard Business School Press.

Reviews Reviews of the book from professional journals include:

Gleason, Sandra (Summer 2001). Planning for Higher Education. 29(4): pp. 38-39. Muir, Clive (2001), in Journal of Business Communication. 38(1): pp. 92-95. O'Malley, Lisa (2002), in Journal of Marketing. 66(4): pp. 124-127. JSTOR 3203363. Watson-Boone, Peter (2001), in Portal: Libraries and the Academy. 1(2): pp. 180-12. doi:10.1353/pla.2001.0031. The Library Quarterly. 2001. 71(1): pp. 94-95. doi:10.1086/603252

See also Knowledge management John Seely Brown Information ecology Information society

Notes

References Seely Brown, John; Duguid, Paul (2000). The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Social Life of Information

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Social Life of Information claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Social Life of Information before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Social Life of Information ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Social Life of Information

In research: The Social Life of Information appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Social Life of Information in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Social Life of Information is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2000 non-fiction books, Information science, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Social Life of Information outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Social Life of Information in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Social Life of Information means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Social Life of Information out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Social Life of Information in simple terms?

Why does The Social Life of Information matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Social Life of Information?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Social Life of Information.