SOCIAL vs. TECHNICAL

It's true that technical people tend to think in small circles. It's this kind of thought pattern that helps them to dig deep into problems, down to their cores and to understand their essence. This kind of understanding is often needed to find the very best of solutions.

One might get the idea that we're therefore so focused on the technology that we just don't know or don't care what's happening outside of the world of technology.

As a review of our history and our research work will show, we're keenly aware of the social implications of what we're doing with this technology.

This means that we're going to tend to do things a little differently from most. When drafting requirements, we're not going to think only about what the organization's needs and expectations are. We're going to ask what the users want out of it, what they expect. When working with an enabling technology, we're going to think about what else we might be enabling so that we can see the risks that we'll be dealing with.

At the same time, we help clients to understand the limitations of technology, so they don't spend IT money trying to solve problems that are best addressed in other areas. A great example of this is the hype surrounding content filters today. There are plenty of arguments in favor of content filtering at work, but the fact is that these things just cannot work. It's an arms race. Find a way to block naughty bits and someone else will find a way around the blockage. John Gilmore said that "the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." He's right. Rather than spending limited IT dollars trying to catch people "wasting company time", why not have business processes that make people accountable for their work (or lack thereof) and let HR -- who are, after all, supposed to be experts in dealing with people -- handle people problems. Let's face it: in most organizations, the IT department is about the last place you want to have people problems addressed.

Simply stated, computing isn't just about technology and neither is it just about people. It's about how technology works for us, and how we work with it.

Understanding what we're doing, what kind of an effect we're having within the grander scheme of things. The end result we hope to achieve is not merely a collection of satisfied customers and a healthy business to show for it, but forward movement as the human race.