paper: computers, networks, and work

Computers, Networks, and Work
Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler
Scientific American, September 1991

This article describes the early adoption of networked communication (e.g. e-mail) into the workplace. The often surprising social implications of networking began with the ARPANET, precursor of the modern internet. E-mail was originally considered a minor additional feature, but rapidly became the most popular feature of the network. We see immediately an important observation regarding social technologies: they are incredibly hard to predict.

In organizations that provided open-access to e-mail (i.e. without managerial restrictions in place), some thought that electronic discussion would improve the decision making process, as conversations would be “purely intellectual… less affected by people’s social skills and personal idiosyncracies.” The actual results were more complicated. Text-only conversation has less context cues (including appearance and manner) and weakened inhibitions. This has led to more difficult decision making, due to a more democratic style in which strong personalities and hierarchical relationships are eroded. While giving a larger voice to typically quieter individuals, lowered social inhibitions in electronic conversation is also prone to more extreme opinions and anger venting (e.g. “flaming”). One study even shows that people who consider themselves unattractive report higher confidence and liveliness over networked communication.

Given these observations, the authors posit a hypothesis: when cues about social context are weak or absent, people ignore their social situation and cease to worry about how others evaluate them. In one study, people self-reported much more illegal or undesirable behaviors over e-mail than when given the same study on pen and paper. In the same vane, traditional surveys of drinking account for only half of known sales, yet an online survey results matched more accurately the sales data than face-to-face reports. The impersonality of this electronic media ironically seems to engender more personal responses.

Networked communication has also been known to affect the structure of the work place. A study found that a networked work group, compared to a non-networked group, created more subcommittees and had multiple committee roles for group members. These networked committees were also designed in a more complex, overlapping structure. Networked communication also presents new opportunities for the life of information. Questions or problems can be addressed by other experienced employees, often from geographically disparate locations, allowing faster response over greater distance. Furthermore, by creating a protocol for saving and categorizing such exchanges, networked media can remember this information, increasing the life of the information and making it available to others.

As the authors illustrate, networked communication showed much promise at an early age. However, it doesn’t always come as expected or for free. The authors note the issue of incentive… shared communication must be beneficial to all those who would be using it for adoption to be successful. Also it may be the case that managers will end up managing people they have never met… hinting at the common ground problem described by the Olsens [Olsen and Olsen, HCI Journal, 2000]. Coming back to the authors’ hypothesis also raises one exciting fundamental question. As networked communication becomes richer, social context will begin to re-appear, modifying the social impact of the technologies. As this richer design space emerges, how can we utilize it to achieve desired social phenomena in a realm that is so prone to unpredictability?