Hello All,

  The Social Life of Information talks about many things, including the concept of "embodied knowledge."  This is a concept whose name I was unaware of, though I refer to it frequently when I talk to friends about how my workplace is operated.  When I read the book, I was a little in the dark about the idea, but after thinking about it, I can see many examples of how experienced workers in my restaurant possess embodied knowledge.  This information is a result of experience, and is not something that can be easily trained. 

  When the casual dining chain where I've worked for seven years decided about a year ago to trim its menu down, several of us more experienced workers saw the potential fall-out.  We feared that people would be displeased if their favorite item left the menu, and that these people would possibly choose to not return.  It happened.  When people came to our store and realized their favorite item was gone, they were, indeed, upset.  Sometimes, they took it out on us servers.  Other times, they took it out on the managers.  Other times, they called corporate HQ. 

  But this was no surprise, at least to some of us servers and bartenders.  Many of us saw this coming from a mile away.  We know our patrons.  We know our product.  We know our management.  Many of us believed that the decision to cut the menu down was a myopic one.  I understand management's reasoning. They felt that it had become too inefficient to keep the menu big.  A smaller menu is a more manageable one, from an execution standpoint.  Upper management was only thinking of how to make the nuts and bolts of the operation more efficient.  They did not consider how people might react.  There is a people aspect of all businesses that must be acknowledged and dealt with. 

  I have seen new managers come into a store and single people out, and try to have them removed.  While there are always some bad apples in a bunch, and sometimes, people do things that are not good for the company, I'm not really dealing that aspect here.  Instead, I am looking at things from the perspective that experienced workers have embodied knowledge that has only developed through experience. 

  Here's another example.  Sometimes, people give their appetizer order and entree order at the same time.  It is then the server's responsibility to manage this information properly.  Appetizers usually don't take as long as entrees do, but not always.  We can estimate how long a given item will take to cook.  For example, mozzarella sticks take about three minutes to cook. On a slow day, you can get them in four minutes.  On a busy day, it could take eight or ten minutes.  Quesadillas can take five one a good day or ten on busy day.  In our computer, we have a button called "FIRST OUT".  You can put a whole order into the computer.  For example, mozzarella sticks + two entrees.  It doesn't matter what the entrees are.  When you hit first out, only the mozzarella sticks go through for four minutes.  If the food is cooked in less time, the entrees pop up on the cooks' screens.  So, the entree order goes to the cooks after the mozzarell sticks are sent out, or four minutes, whatever happens first.  And this FIRST OUT button works well, sometimes.  But sometimes, it is disasterous.  If the appetizer takes ten minutes, and the entree takes just six, they will come out at the same time.  People tend to get angry when this happens.  Experience can help us feel out when it is most efficient to wring in the food to get the desired result. 

When I trained a new server last week, I had to explain this process of how first out works.  I told her it's good to use it to start with, so she doens't forget to wring in anyone's food, but that the button is not good to use all the time.  When people are trained, they are told to use the button all the time.  Without the experience, and the embodied knowledge that comes with it, new servers would be left in the dark as to why the FIRST OUT button failed them.  This experience is valuable to keeping the restaurant running smoothly. 

Hope this made sense.
Twitter me if you have comments or questions. 

Joe

Janine Melnitz: I bet you like to read a lot, too.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Print is dead.
-Ghostbusters

[Via Businessinsider.com]

It is no secret that the New York Times is in major trouble.  Sales have dropped and costs have grown to such a level, that according to insider sources, the paper could go bankrupt by May 2009 if they do not take drastic measures. Business Insider crunched the numbers, and found that the New York Times print costs are so high, that they could give a free Amazon Kindle to every subscriber and it would only cost them half of what it costs to deliver their papers for a year.

This has been the trend for many print publications.  January saw PC Magazine, one of the longest running technology magazines go 100 percent digital, stopping the run of their print magazine. So will the granddaddy of American newspapers soon follow?

Of course the Kindle idea is just an illustration to show how expensive print is compared to digital distribution, but it gets the mind wandering...

If the NYT made a partnership with Amazon, bought Kindles in bulk, and promised to convert a percentage (not all of course) of the most wide subscription base in print media to Kindle customers, I am sure Amazon would drop the price of Kindles even further for the Times.  Amazon is a content store first and they make their money on the Kindle customers buying electronic books, not on the devices themselves.  The more people with Kindles in their hands, the more prospective Kindle E-book buyers.

"Subscribe to The New York Times for 18 dollars a month, and get a free Amazon Kindle!"

That would be a tempting offer for current subscribers and an even more tempting offer for the New York Times. They would eliminate costs to deliver to their Kindle Customers and after about a year, they would have the initial cost of the Kindle back and be making pure profit off of them. The offer of a free device would even increase subscriber-base.

Of course whether this plan would work is very risky.  When asked what he thought of the Kindle, Steve Jobs said:

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

Ironically, this was in an interview with The New York Times.

With the amount of iPhones, Blackberries, and G1s being sold, within reach is a time when the majority of people have web-enabled large screened devices in their pockets and the teen/college-aged facebook generation are the adults of the world.  To these communication-obsessed individuals, paper is wasteful, outdated the second it is printed, and frankly not all that exciting. Truthfully it is only a matter of time for print publications, they have a limited window to evolve or die. 2009 may go down as the year it all changes, the question is on what medium will that history be recorded?

Overall, I found the readings in The Social Life of Information to be interesting, although they felt more like Part II of last week's Information Ecologies (as mentioned by classmate Chris Meyers in an earlier post.) 

I did, however, feel that some of the text was a bit dated.  Early on in the readings, Brown and Duguid bring up the idea of "endism", which really got me thinking.  They list a handful of things in society that are believed will be "brought to an end" by the ever-evolving technology around us.  The authors seem to dismiss this notion, but the fact is that in the nine years since this book was published, we have seen trends sway a bit in the direction of certain aspects of "endism."  For example, the book cites that technology could end "press, television, and mass media" as well as "universities."  Let's now look at the world as it is in 2009.  Hard copy newspapers are rapidly being phased out and replaced with faster-paced online reporting and blogging, we can watch newscasts and news video online, and one of the newest trends at colleges is the option of "online class" (in some instances, a person can even complete a full college education via online resources.)  The idea of "endism" may not be too far-fetched, in some cases.

One other concept that I found particularly interesting was the idea of manipulation of information by autonomous agents, especially product brokering.  The authors talk about Amazon.com keeping tabs on what items you search for, then, at a later date, recommending similar products based on your earlier searches.

This was a great example of the overall theme of this book; where we are with technology versus where we think we should be.  Product brokering seems to be a prime example of a developed technology with the intention of convenience, but lacking the critical thinking that would raise the quetion of; Do we need this?

Guidance Software Inc. is a technology firm that specializes in helping companies dig up old emails and other electronic documents that may be evidence in a lawsuit.

Well it turns out one of Guidance's former employees thought her dismissal was fishy.  Cassondra Todd felt it had something to do with the fact she is a woman. She also thought that the company's chairmen pressured her manager to give her a bad review; so she requested an investigation.

Todd hoped that whatever documents were found would show evidence of discrimination.  No evidence surfaced.  This shocked her.

She then hired an attorney and filed a wrongful-termination claim.  Both sides were required to present e-documents for evidence.  The results of Guidance's e-discovery seemed small to her; but Todd couldn't prove that Guidance was holding back. 

That was until Todd's first manager at Guidance and head of a rival company printed and saved some documents from the time of Todd's first bad performance review.

Considering that this is what Guidance specialized in, the judge presiding the case reacted harshly.  Awarding Todd with legal fees, and two years of her annual salary.  However other experts not involved with the case say Guidance was not legally required to search its backup tapes at first, given the expense of reading them.

This raises an interesting point I thought.  The article states the law differentiates between "reasonably accessible" files and ones that are too expensive to tackle at least in initial e-discovery.  More and more documents are becoming electronic now.  Should the law be as ambiguous as it is?  This surprised me that the law was as vague as it seems to be.

I heard in one of my classes last semester, that the setup for the computer QWERTY keyboard isn’t the most efficient and comfortable (efficient meaning one that will allow its user to type the fastest). They have created keyboards for computers with more efficient setups. All that is needed is to learn the setup, and the user can type much faster than they would be able to if they used QWERTY keyboard.

We didn’t adopt this alternate setup when the computer was being adopted into our culture. We adopted the QWERTY keyboard from the typewriter and moved it to the personal computer.

Typewriters were setup this way because if one were using the typewriter "the type bars had a tendency to clash and jam if struck in rapid succession, and it would only be discovered if the typist raised the carriage to inspect what had been typed."

Now that the computer dominates our word processing, one would assume the QWERTY keyboard would no longer be used. This isn’t the case. Being a strict rationalist, I thought at the time this was the silliest thing.

This is an excellent example of one of the main ideas of The Social Life of Information, by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, address.

After reading this text, it really feels like an extension of the prior text the class read, Information Ecologies, by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day. I snuck a peek at the bibliography, and what did I find? There was a reference to that text.

The beginning of the book starts out addressing the similar issues taken by Nardi and O’Day. Then it delves deeper into business, technology, and information issues. Finally the book ends with technology, information and higher education issues.

I feel one of the most important things Brown and Duguid discuss is that scientists and engineers can predict one piece of technology will replace another all they want; it doesn’t make it necessarily true. As they point out in the beginning of one chapter, one historian emptying out a carton of 200 year old letters couldn’t stand the dust accumulated and wished they would digitize the letters so he wouldn’t have to experience it again. But another historian was busy smelling the letters hoping to find a scent of vinegar, because if he did, he knew that the box from that particular town had an outbreak of cholera. All letters from an infected town were disinfected with vinegar if an outbreak of cholera occurred. Like futurists who predict technology will take over, the dust historian saw no need for keeping the old letters. The vinegar historian, however, would not have the same experience if the letters were digitized.  We can predict with new technology will replace old, but what we don't know is why people stick to these old technology.  It may be for reasons we would never have thought; and if that is true, then how can we accurately predict what technologies will fade and what won't?