Apr 25, 2011

Wall Street Journal Recommends Paul Duguid's 11-year-old book "The Social Life of Information"

"The Social Life of Information" was written in 2000 by Paul Duguid, adjunct professor at the School of Information, and John Seely Brown, former director of Xerox PARC.

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From The Wall Street Journal

Making Sense of It All: Getting Knowledge From Information

By Michael Totty

Want to know more about how businesses can harness technology to make the most of information? We asked three experts for their recommended reading lists. Here's what they said:

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"The Social Life of Information"
By John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid

CIOs are called "information officers" for a reason: They're supposed to provide information that informs corporate decisions and actions. To do that, they need to understand not only information technology, but information itself. This and the following book will get aspiring CIOs well down the road on that topic.

"The Social Life of Information" is elegant and a bit academic. The two researchers, formerly of Xerox PARC—where the personal computer was invented—show that information and the business processes it informs are socially constructed. You won't act on information you don't trust, and you won't follow a technology-supported business process unless it meets your individual and social norms about how work should be done. The book is an excellent counter to the techno-utopianism that infects the IT field....

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Last updated:

October 4, 2016