The Social Shaping Of Information And Communications Technologies
Robin Williams
12/97
Introduction
This chapter draws upon the body of research into the social shaping of
technology (SST), and in particular of Information and Communications Technologies
(ICT), in order to gain a better understanding of the kinds of process that
may shape the future emergence and development of the new Multimedia based
products and services expected to arise with the emerging Information Superhighways.
The first part of the chapter introduces the idea of the social shaping
of technology (SST) showing the origins of the social shaping perspective
in studies which showed how a range of social and economic, as well as narrowly
'technical' factors, patterned the development and use of technologies.
In reviewing the rich understanding of the process of technological change
offered by SST research, it highlights some contradictory tendencies surrounding
the interplay between technological dynamism and entrenchment, and the engagement
between technology supply and use. These are reflected in features of contemporary
technology, in particular in the growing importance of industry and public
standards, and the increasingly configurational character of technologies
as assemblages of standard and customised components.
The second part of the chapter examines how SST improves our understanding
of the development and adoption of ICT. It starts by examining some of the
social and economic processes that have historically shaped the overall
structure and architecture of ICTs. It then goes on to review research into
social shaping processes in the application of ICT encompassing the design
and use, examining separately industrial applications of IT and ICTs in
everyday life. Finally it presents a model of innovation in multimedia,
to provide a framework for analysing the future emergence of Multimedia
and related technologies.
Part 1: The social shaping of technology (SST)
The origins of the social shaping perspective
The 'social shaping perspective' arises from the recent shift in social
and economic research on technology to explore and analyse both the content
of technologies and the detailed processes of innovation (MacKenzie &
Wajcman 1985, Bijker & Law 1992). SST is conceived as a 'broad church'
encompassing a variety of scholars, with differing concerns and intellectual
traditions, including for example, industrial sociology, evolutionary economics,
economic history, sociology of science (Williams & Edge 1996). SST stands
in contrast to post-Enlightenment traditions which, by treating 'technology'
as if it was separate from 'society' and not amenable to social explanation
and analysis, limited the scope of inquiry to monitoring its 'social impacts'
- i.e. the social adjustments it saw as being required by 'technological
progress'. SST emerged through a critique of the 'technological determinism'
inherent in this tradition, with its presumptions that particular paths
of technological change were both inevitable (perhaps reflecting an inner
technical logic or economic rationality) and required particular kinds of
'social' change. Instead SST studies show that technology is a social product,
patterned by the conditions of its creation and use. At every stage in both
the generation and implementation of new technologies a variety of technical
options are available. Which option is selected cannot be reduced to simple
'technical' considerations, but is shaped by a range of broader social,
economic, cultural and political factors.
The concept that there are 'choices' (though not necessarily conscious choices)
in the design of artefacts and technological systems is thus central to
SST. Different technological routes are available, potentially leading
to different outcomes in terms of the form of technology: the content of
technological artefacts and practices. Significantly, these choices could
have differing implications for society and for particular social groups.
SST thus goes beyond traditional approaches, merely concerned with assessing
the 'social impacts' of technology, to examine what shapes the technology
which is having these 'impacts', and the way in which these impacts are
achieved (MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985). In this way SST broadens the policy
agenda; it allows people to get inside science and technology, offering
the prospects of moving beyond defensive and reactive responses to technology,
towards a more pro-active role.
Further, SST offered a more realistic understanding of the process of technological
change than the mainstream 'technocratic' approaches which had inherited
from Post-Enlightenment traditions a concept of technological progress that
did not seek to problematise technological innovation. These views were
not well-equipped to deal with the experiences of technology, which have
been seen as increasingly problematic, particularly since the 1970s, on
at least two fronts. First is the experience of unintended and undesired
consequences of technology (for example health and environmental hazards).
Second, the growing pace and salience of technological change has drawn
attention to the difficulty of achieving successful technological innovation
- and the realisation that the traditional approach of supporting technological
supply was not, by itself, sufficient to achieve technological advance,
let alone its application to achieve improvements in economic performance
and social well-being. In contrast to the certainties held out by images
of social and technological progress, technological change was revealed
by a growing body of SST research as a highly uncertain and unpredictable
process.
The process of technological change
SST approaches attempt to grasp the complexity of the socio-economic processes
involved in technological innovation. SST criticised the presumption of
'linear models' of innovation that technology supply would generate solutions
that corresponded to user requirements, that could then be simply diffused
through the market to fulfill society's needs. In contrast SST has shown
that identifying, let alone meeting, current and emerging demand for technologies
can be difficult. In particular, social needs, and the means by which they
may be fulfilled, are not fixed entities, but evolve, partly in the face
of new technical capabilities. These problems are particularly acute in
relation to radical innovation (as opposed to the incremental enhancement
of existing devices with well-established uses), since the potential uses
and usefulness of an emerging technology are often not well understood by
suppliers let alone by potential users.
However innovation is not restricted to technology supply - but continues
through its implementation, consumption and use. Fleck (1988a) coined the
term 'innofusion' to highlight the important innovative effort as (industrial
automation) suppliers and users struggle to get supplier offerings to work
in their particular circumstances. In this process, user needs and requirements
are discovered and technologies are further innovated. Other SST writers
have developed broadly homologous concepts to stress the active and innovative
characteristics of the processes of consumption and use of technologies
in other settings - and in particular their domestication within the household
(Silverstone 1991).
The importance of innovation around the application and use of technologies
is one of the reasons why the potential uses and utility of a technology
often cannot be fully understood at the outset of a programme of innovation.
We have only limited ability to anticipate the development of technological
capacities and, more importantly, to pre-conceive future applications/uses.
For perhaps the biggest uncertainties here surround the responses of the
user and the evolution of 'social needs' . The future uses and utility of
a new application may not at first be self-evident (as we show below, for
example, in relation to the telephone). This is because of the difficulty
of anticipating the outcome of the protracted learning processes involving
suppliers and users alike as technologies are applied and used.
Consideration of (intermediate and final) users, in turn, draws our attention
to the range of players involved in innovation, with their different relationships
to the technology and varying commitments in terms of past experience and
expertise. These players - including technical specialists from supplier
organisations, suppliers of complementary as well as competing products,
consultants, policymakers, existing and potential users - may have widely
differing understandings of technology and its utility (Pinch and Bijker,
1984). SST emphasises the negotiability of technologies - in the sense that
artefacts typically emerge through a complex process of action and interaction
between these heterogeneous players, rather than being determined by any
one player.
These considerations draw our attention to potential problems of communication
and collaboration between these different players. Technological development
often involves the combination of diverse bodies of expertise - knowledge
of different technical fields, as well as expertise in non-technical areas
such as marketing, finance. In this context there is considerable scope
for failures of communication between groups. Indeed the 'bounded rationality'
(Simon 1982) inherent in such situations may result in satisficing behaviour,
as groups draw upon imperfect representations of others' abilities to contribute
to problem solving. Difficulties, for example, in ensuring the flows of
information between various expert, managerial and other groups, with their
differing perspectives and knowledge bases, potentially become more difficult
as technological products become more complex and draw upon more extensive
bodies of technical and business knowledge (Fincham et al. 1995). Particular
problems concern how to match technical specialists' understanding of technical
possibilities with non-specialist users with their understanding of the
application domain.
The complexity of these interactions is one of the reasons why the development
and application of technology involves deep uncertainties. Technological
innovations often fail altogether; they usually develop far slower than
suppliers and promoters predict and may follow rather different trajectories
than was initially anticipated.
Two aspects of these social processes in technological innovation are of
particular interest to SST. The first concerns processes by which technologies
become stabilised, or may become destabilised, reflected in the interplay
between entrenchment or dynamism of technological innovation. The second
surrounds the tensions that may arise in matching the generic potential
of new technologies to current and emerging user requirements. We discuss
these in turn, below, reviewing some concepts that have been advanced to
capture these features. The rest of this part of the paper explores how
these contradictory pressures, for example between globalisation and standardisation,
and the enormous dynamism of technological innovation today are reflected
in some distinctive features of contemporary technologies - viz. the increasingly
'configurational' character of technologies and the growing role of 'inter-operability
standards'.
The dynamism and entrenchment of technology
A certain stability is a necessary and important feature of technology -
for example we want to be sure that certain technical components will perform
reliably, and continue to do so under a range of circumstances. On the other
hand such rigidity can be counter-productive, where for example, technological
design becomes fixed and embodies features that do not prove attractive
to potential users. This entrenchment of technology arises in part because
technologies develop cumulatively, utilising, where appropriate, the knowledge
base and the social and technical infrastructure of existing technologies.
An important aspect of the success of the modern technological project is
the way it has been able to build upon earlier achievements. This underpins
the gradual improvements in performance of technologies as technological
knowledge is refined and developed, and is a major source of (to use economic
terminology) the increasing returns from established technological options
as a result of 'sunk investment'. This is one important way in which the
results of earlier technological choices constrain later technological decision-making.
These 'path dependencies' can result in 'lock-in' to established solutions
and standards, even where these technologies are no longer optimal (David
1975, Arthur 1989, Cowan 1992). Well-known examples of this are the QWERTY
keyboard and railway gauges.
At the same time, SST draws our attention to the turbulence of innovation
processes; to the range of actors bearing upon the design and use of artefacts
and their diverse and changing requirements and commitments to technologies.
Innovation processes involve an interplay between sets of forces favouring
entrenchment and favouring dynamism.
Entrenching factors are not just economic, but include, importantly, shared
perceptions and expectations of a technology. Alignment of perception is
an important step in innovation. For example, engineers must project visions
of a technology and its capabilities to enroll the support of other players
if they are to obtain the technical and human resources needed to create
it. Developing such alliances of players - the socio-technical constituencies
(Molina 1989) needed to create new technologies - may involve establishing
consensus around particular technological concepts and options. The extension
of such consensus to include the range of suppliers, consumers of an artefact
and other relevant social groups presages technological 'closure' and the
stabilisation of technological artefacts (Pinch and Bijker 1984). However,
alignments that are premature or embody particular presumptions or visions
of a technology can focus attention too narrowly on particular technological
paths in a way that can prove disastrous if circumstances and perceived
user requirements change (an example is the recently abandoned $150 million
investment in the EFTPoS UK pilot for Electronic Funds Transfer at Point
of Sale [Howells and Hine 1993]). This is just one example of how inflexible
development contexts may result in inflexible technological designs (Collingridge
1992).
Technological dynamism is, in part, underpinned by the development of new
technological knowledges. However supply-push is only one of a range of
factors and actors in innovation (otherwise technological development would
indeed be a more predictable, linear process, with the main shaping force
being the principles embedded in the technology). In particular, technological
offering have to be fitted to the current and emerging requirements of existing
and future users, as already noted. User responses may be an entrenching
factor in innovation - as common perceptions and understandings emerge.
However, technologies, once implemented, may in turn provide the basis for
further innovation. Suppliers may identify new applications for their offerings,
or may seek to adapt them to make them suitable for newly identified groups
of users. Users, importantly, may find new, innovative ways of using artefacts
that may take a technology in directions not anticipated by its originators.
This is particularly noticeable in the area of ICT, as we see below.
So we find that technological innovation is subject to two contradictory
tendencies. On the one hand, we identify processes forces that will tend
to stabilise technologies, by aligning expectations, and reducing the uncertainties
and costs of established models. On the other hand, the dynamics of the
development both of new technological opportunities and of user requirements
- new problems thrown up by societal changes, and the articulation of new
ways of linking those problems with technical possibilities - may open up
new application possibilities, and undermine existing solutions, reversing
the trend to stabilisation (Brady et al. 1992). An important influence here
concerns the dynamics of particular product markets. Economic pressures
may favour established approaches, in a context of positive returns on past
investment and economies of scale. Standardisation of technology has played
an important role - yielding substantial economic benefits for various players:
bigger markets and greater profits for suppliers and important price advantages
for consumers who can share development costs (which may be very high with
high-technology, knowledge intensive products). In this way, some technical
artefacts may become stabilised and standardised. They may be made available
to the user through the market as 'black-boxed' solutions, as 'commodities'
with well-established attributes. However, competitive considerations may
also counteract this. Once new markets have been established this will attract
new entrants to compete with established suppliers, who in turn may seek
to differentiate their offerings and retain their existing customer base
through technological leadership. And users may seek to gain 'competitive
advantage' by adopting these new offerings. So here again we find a complex
interplay between standardisation and commodification - consolidating and
undermining technological entrenchment over time.
The scope for standardisation and commodification partly reflects market
structure, but is equally a function of the kinds of knowledge deployed,
both of technologies and of the user domain, and their distribution between
supplier and user firms (Fleck 1995), and the extent to which this knowledge
remains local and contingent or can be appropriated and centralised. For
example, the creation of 'black-boxed' technical solutions, implies that
substantial parts of the knowledge required to create it and used it can
be appropriated and incorporated into a generic solution (which can therefore
be sold and used in a variety of settings). An important element of this
may involve reducing the knowledge needed by the local user to apply and
use the technology (either because the technology is simple to operate or
because the principles of its operation are widely understood - a consideration
which may encourage designers of new products to seek to mimic the look
and feel of established artefacts). However, as von Hippel (1990) has pointed
out, some problems are 'sticky' - hard to separate from the context in which
they arise - and can only be handled on the basis of local knowledge and
experience - limiting the scope for central supply of such black-boxed solutions,
and requiring closer collaboration between supplier and user.
The engagement between supply and use
SST has become increasingly concerned to explore the engagement between
supplier offerings and user requirements as new technologies are applied
and used, and as new product markets are constructed. We can also distinguish
a range of different circumstances in terms of the relationships between
suppliers and users. We will explore two extremes on this range by contrasting
industrial process technologies and consumer goods sold on a mass market
basis for use in the home. These represent very different contexts for engagement
between suppliers and users.
Thus supplier-user communication might be relatively straightforward in
relation to industrial technologies, where there are direct links between
supplier and consumer and where both supplier and consumer share relatively
high levels of technical skills as well as presumptions about the values
associated with technology. In practice, however, attempts to implement
industrial technologies often prove difficult. Supplier and user often find
themselves in an unplanned process of joint development in the struggle
get novel technologies to work under actual conditions of use. Fleck's (1988a)
concept of 'innofusion' seeks to capture the kind of 'learning by struggling'
which is involved. Implementation provides a test ground, where suppliers
learn about user requirements, and both parties learn about the utility
of (and problems in using) technological products. It is an important, though
often overlooked, site of innovation, yielding knowledge that can inform
further innovations. The importance of such supplier-user interactions has
been demonstrated in a range of ICTs, including robotics (Fleck 1988a),
computer systems in the finance service sector (Fincham et al. 1995) and
computer-aided production management systems in manufacturing (Clark &
Newell 1993, Webster & Williams 1993).
Supplier-user relations, conversely, can be expected to be much more problematic
in the case with mass-produced consumer goods, where users are highly dispersed
and localised, and there is little scope for direct engagement between suppliers
and users, and where engineer's have little understanding of the user and
the use setting (for example in relation to domestic technologies). Since
the supplier does not have direct links with all its customers (customers
who, in the case of radical new products, do not even exist yet) the supplier
must find some way of modeling user requirements. The consumer may be represented
'by proxy' - for example, through market research on panels of potential
customers or through discussions with intermediate users (e.g. retailers
of the goods and services being produced). The supplier is forced to play
a major role in prefiguring, or indeed constructing, the customer and the
market (Collinson 1993). This remains a rather difficult and uncertain process
for many suppliers - particularly where the technologies are consumed in
the private sphere of the household (Silverstone 1991).
It may also be necessary to enroll a range of other actors, including users,
and, on occasions, competing suppliers and suppliers of complementary products
(Collinson 1993), to participate in developing markets - as for example
in the case of new biotechnology-based products (Green 1992, Walsh 1993).
Where there is no existing market for a new technology, "the 'market'
may have to be created to go with the product" if suppliers are to
realise its 'commercial potential' (Green 1990:165). A key constraint concerns
the need to diffuse the knowledge required to understand the utility of
new products, and how to use them.
The lack of direct links with the supplier in relation to mass-produced
goods equally poses problems for the final consumer, who may have little
opportunity to influence their design and development, other than the `veto
power' to adopt or not (Cockburn 1993). However, the presumption that, even
in such situations, consumers are wholly passive recipients of the meanings
inscribed in the artefact, has come under increasing criticism within SST
(Sørensen 1994). As we see below in relation to ICTs in everyday
life, diverse consumers develop their own understandings of the artefact
and its uses. (Pinch and Bijker 1984, Sørensen and Berg 1992, Akrich
1992). Indeed, consumers have shown remarkable inventiveness in sidestepping
presumptions about the use of artefacts inscribed within technological design,
and adapting technologies to their own purposes. This may contribute to
new understandings of the significance of a technology - as the case of
the 're-invention' of the telephone as a social (rather than a business)
communication tool shows (Fischer 1992). In this sense, even in relation
to actors who have no power to affect technological design, closure is never
final.
Features of contemporary technology
This brings us back to some of the implications of SST's analysis of the
process of innovation for our understanding of the character of contemporary
technologies as the condensates of these complex 'sociotechnical' processes.
First is the concept that complex technologies are configurations of heterogeneous
technical and social components rather than finished systemic solutions.
Second concerns the increasing importance of standards as a feature of certain
current innovation processes characterised by rapid technological dynamism
amongst a wide array of players. These point to changes in the relationship
between 'technology' and 'society'.
Technologies as configurations
The concept of configurational technology was articulated as part of the
critique of received ideas about technological innovation which overemphasised
the role of technology supply. As already noted, these ideas involved a
stereotypical view that technologies were created as 'systems': internally
coherent, finished solutions that matched user demand. Some technologies
are of course available in this way - in particular standardised component
technologies such as microprocessors, personal computers. Applications of
technology with well-delimited functions (e.g. word-processor packages can
also be acquired as packaged solutions. However, this is less feasible when
we come to more complex applications of technology which must be more closely
'configured' to the requirements of the particular user - for example company-wide
internal computer systems which must support a wide range of activities,
can rarely be obtained in the form of standard solutions. Instead, firms
must 'customise' solutions to fit their particular structure, working methods
and requirements. They may be forced to select, and link together, a variety
of standard components from different suppliers. The result is a particular
configuration - a complex array of standardised and customised automation
elements. Moreover, no single supplier has the knowledge needed to design
and install such complex configurational technologies. Instead, this knowledge
is distributed amongst a range of suppliers (of different technological
components) and a range of groups within the firm. Configurations are highly
specific to the individual firms in which they are adopted - and local knowledge
of the firm, its markets, its production and administration processes, its
information practices, and so on, are at a premium (Fleck 1993).
The concept of configurational technology emphasises the uniqueness of particular
settings in which technologies are applied. It points to the tension between
the need to cater for specific user situations and the advantages of adopting
cheap standardised solutions. In particular it suggests ways of resolving
these through a 'pick-and-mix' strategy, drawing upon cheap standardised
components, and combining a particular selection of these, with a modicum
of customisation, into a specific assemblage configured to the specific
purposes concerned.
Standards
An increasingly important feature of current technological changes - particularly
in the area of ICT, is that technologies are becoming so complex and intricate
that no single player controls development of an entire technological field.
For example suppliers cannot produce complete technologies from scratch
but must instead make offerings which incorporate or are incorporated within
the offerings of a range of other players. This is partly a result of the
increasing linkages between technologies, and partly reflects the dynamism
and turbulence of a system under which innovation proceeds on many fronts
'in parallel'. In this setting, standards for interoperability between different
technologies have particular importance. This relates both to de jure standards
arising from open, public standard setting processes and the de facto industrial
standards which emerge from the choices and commercial strategies of players
in the supply chain.
The importance of standards partly rests upon the distinctive economics
of many contemporary technologies - technological products that are knowledge
intensive, and that exhibit strong network externalities. The huge Research
and Development costs of new high technology products, are offset by massive
potential economies of scale given the relatively low costs of their reproduction
- in a market that is increasingly operating at the global level. Economies
of scale bring great uncertainties for developers: huge losses for those
that fail and potentially enormous returns for successful products. Suppliers
are increasingly drawn to collaborate in development to share these costs
and reduce the risks. Economists have drawn attention to increasing returns
to past investment and network externalities (the situation in which the
value of a product increases with the number of other users - the telephone
is an obvious example) which mean that a technology may not be attractive
until a certain level of usage is achieved and perhaps will not be viable
unless its promoters are able to convince sufficient numbers of potential
customers and co-suppliers that this represents the way forwards (Williams
1995). This is particularly relevant where there are competing products
embodying different standards or technological solutions - for example the
VHS-Betamax competition for domestic Video Cassette Recorders. Confidence
that a product will not become obsolete is important for both customers
and producers of complementary products (Swann 1990).
The emergence of industry standard products (black-boxed solutions) 'creates'
markets, offering cheaper products and a greater choice of suppliers for
consumers. This creates an incentive for suppliers to collaborate in creating
larger and more stable markets. Increasingly, firms are coming together,
with competitors and suppliers of complementary products, to agree standards
for emerging technologies (Cowan 1992, Collinson 1993). Future technologies/markets
are being pre-constructed in a virtual space constituted by the collective
activities of players around standards for the interconnection between products!
As we see later, such standards have been critical in the development of
technologies such as the Internet and multimedia.
These developments, though primarily concerned with the commercial shaping
of technologies, also have consequences for their broader social implications.
For we can see, in the creation of inter-operability standards, and the
spread of configurational technologies a shift in supply strategies from
the creation of products designed as complete solutions dedicated to particular
uses, towards multipurpose products that can be combined with others and
adapted for a range of purposes. In contrast to early SST analyses, for
example Noble's (1979) study of automatic machine tools, which emphasised
how the particular objectives of those controlling the design and development
of technologies became embodied in new artefacts, the effect of these developments
is to divorce the design process for particular artefacts (and especially
component artefacts) from the particular social contexts and priorities
of their origination, in order to open them up to the widest possible market.
This creates increasing distance between technological design and its social
application. The fluidity of this situation suggests that it is not helpful
to look for the social implications of a technology at the level of specific
artefacts (eg particular components, or even the integrated artefact given
the potential range of configurations available for the same function),
but rather at how they are inserted into broader systems of technology and
social practice.
These observations apply with particular relevance to information and communications
technologies, and it is to these that we now turn.
Part 2: Understanding the development and adoption of information and
communication technology
The installation of Information Superhighways, coupled with advances in
processing power and usability of information technology, have led to widespread
expectations of the rapid adoption of a new cluster of technologies under
the rubric of multimedia. Applications based upon these technologies are,
moreover, expected to be widely diffused in many areas of working and social
life, and to have profound social and economic implications. In short, these
technologies are expected to underpin the transition to an information society.
However, beyond this global vision, there is little certainty about the
kinds of applications that can be expected to emerge.
How can we assess the prospects and societal implications of these new technologies?
Experience with these technologies is extremely limited. Initial applications
may, anyway, be far from typical of future offerings. Much contemporary
discussion is based upon visions of future offerings - which are predominantly
technology driven visions, and informed by supplier perspectives. The lessons
from earlier technologies suggest that these visions may be deeply misleading.
The past can provide us with important insights into the future (Bruce 1988,
Dutton 1995). In the history of ICTs a number of general issues and problems
recur - though they may be resolved differently in different periods and
contexts, and have shaped technological development. These include the following:
i) Local and Global: how to reconcile the specificity of the social contexts
of application and use of ICT with the claims to universality of ICT. This
bears centrally upon the promises held out of the ready availability of
powerful ICT solutions, particularly given the enormous price advantages
of mass-produced standard offerings.
ii) Formalisation and ambiguity: ICTs have their roots in formal and mathematical
models and representations. Early commercial applications of IT focused
on routine and simplified information processing activities, such as payroll
and account-keeping. These could readily be described in mathematical terms,
converted to algorithms and implemented in software. Difficulties arise
in attempts to apply ICTs to human communication and decision-making processes
involving complex judgments and interpretation in contexts that are typically
characterised by ambiguity and uncertainty and that are inherently more
difficult to describe in formal mathematical terms.
iii) Expectation and experience: The creation of expectations about the
performance and utility of future technologies is a pre-requisite for attracting
investment. Similarly, supplier product announcements, or 'vapourware' may
be a means of shaping the behavior of competitors and collaborators. However
expectations must not become too far removed from emerging capabilities.
Technical specialists have tended to underestimate the complexity of application
areas, and the consequent difficulties of applying ICTs, which has contributed
to the repeated experience that ICTs fail to meet the expectations generated
by technology-driven visions.
iv) Interpreting artefacts and user requirements: while technology driven
views typically takes the utility of the artefact for granted - assuming
that new functionalities offered will somehow match user requirements. However,
users do not have determinate pre-existing 'requirements'; requirements
are constructed - built upon earlier templates and evolving with use of
new artefacts. This is one of the reasons why various players (suppliers
and current and future intermediate and final users) may have quite different
perceptions of artefacts and their utility.
v) Suppliers and users: matching supplier offerings to user need can thus
prove problematic, particularly with novel technologies where there are
few established models of the application or its use. The relationship between
suppliers and users may be particularly difficult given the uneven distribution
between them of technical and other pertinent knowledges (for example of
the application domain). This is reflected, for example in the 'difficulties
in communication' frequently experienced between technical specialist suppliers
and non-expert users.
We can now explore these processes through a review of research into social
and economic factors shaping the development and use of ICT. First we examine
the historical shaping of the core ICT technologies and their overall structure
and architecture. We then explore the industrial application of ICT in the
workplace, which has been the subject of extensive research, before going
on to examine the more limited body of research into technologies used in
everyday life: specifically communication technologies and technologies
in the home. There are important differences between shaping processes across
these different settings of innovation, and it may be misleading to draw
direct comparisons. This does not prevent us from drawing important and
enlightening parallels between social shaping processes in these contexts.
Moreover, current technologies more readily span the two settings and blur
the distinction between work and leisure and between public and private
life. The final part of this chapter draws together these findings to present
a model of these emerging multimedia technologies and present a few concluding
suggestions about its future development.
Shaping the overall structure and architecture of ICTs
First, a general observation: the very structure and architecture of contemporary
information technology is itself a product of historical processes of social
and economic shaping. The idea of the computer had been prefigured by von
Neumann's theoretical exposition of the idea of computability in which he
envisaged a universal calculating and symbolic processing engine that could
be applied to the full range of human activities. However there was no clear
idea of how this would be achieved.
At the outset there was little separation between the actors and institutions
responsible for the supply and use of electronic data processing. The first
computers were built by the very people who used them. The subsequent history
of computing has been characterised by its segmentation into different technical
elements, and the differentiation of their supply, starting with the separation
between hardware and software. Software itself has become hierarchically
segmented between Utilities: such as operating systems or programming languages,
which are closely related to the functionality of computer machines and
Applications Solutions, such as accounting and payroll systems which concern
the use of computers for example in organisations including industry specific
applications such as electronic funds transfer systems in banking (OECD
1985). This segmentation reflects the creation and differentiation of a
specialised supply sector. It also marks out a degree of autonomy between
the development of different components of the technological system, whereby
interaction between each set of components is restricted, for example by
stabilising the interfaces between components. This can be seen as reflecting
a strategy for managing the growing complexity of the IT infrastructure;
a process of 'black-boxing': stabilising certain elements while segmenting
the knowledge involved in their development and use (Fincham et al. 1995).
These developments both made possible and reflect a process of differentiation
in the industrial sectors engaged in the supply of computing technologies.
So whereas industrial users of automatic data processing machines, such
as Prudential Assurance and Lyons, were heavily involved in the construction
of the earliest commercial computers (Campbell-Kelly 1989) and in the creation
of the first operating systems (Friedman 1989), today these technologies
are developed almost exclusively by specialised IT suppliers (Brady et al.
1992).
This highlights two further observations about innovation in ICT. The first
concerns the important contribution made by the users of computing to innovations
and the ways these may be taken up in future technology supply and ultimately
become sedimented in core technologies. This continues today - the most
famous recent example being the development by CERN scientists of the ideas
that underpinned the World Wide Web. Second, it highlights an important
dynamic of innovation, involving the separation of component technologies
from particular contexts of use. In other words, elements of technologies
have become increasingly standardised and independent from applications.
This is readily demonstrated in relation to hardware. The first computing
machines were 'hard-wired' - dedicated to particular applications, such
as code breaking and calculating missile trajectories. In those days, before
the introduction of stored programmes, reprogramming involved physical reconfiguration
and switching of machines. Even with stored programming there were still
particular machines for particular commercial (and military) computing purposes
- until IBM launched its 360 series as a family of machines with the prospect
of portability of programmes and data from one machine to the next, which
heralded an era of cheaper mass-produced machines and underpinned the growth
in commercial computing. Standard operating systems and languages were designed
to allow portability of software between different manufacturers' computers.
This process has continued until today, for example, core technologies such
as microprocessors are produced for genuinely global markets, to be incorporated
into a plethora of ICT products.
An important driving force for these developments has been the powerful
economic advantages of mass producing standardised products, as much or
more than the vision of universal technical solutions. The economics of
certain IT 'globalised' products such as microprocessors and computer operating
systems involves huge R&D costs of new products, coupled with massive
potential economies of scale. This bring great uncertainties: huge losses
for those that fail and potentially enormous returns for those that prevail.
These, coupled with the pace of innovation in IT, and the need to maintain
inter-operability between the offerings of different players, have profoundly
shaped the development of ICT. The market for a component technology is
effectively defined by the installed base of complementary products (for
example software that can run on a particular computer's operating system).
This provides enormous incentives for the development of industry standards
(for example the IBM personal computer). Competitive strategies of 'architectural
technology' have emerged, notably in the microprocessor industry, where
some elements of a product remain constant through several different generations
(Morris and Ferguson 1993). This allows producers to innovate their products
without abandoning their existing markets and provides some guarantee of
compatibility over several product generations for consumers and producers
of complementary products. Attempts to launch radical new microprocessor
designs, such as the Japanese TRON project, have often been unsuccessful,
given the widespread diffusion of Intel and Motorola's CISC (complex instruction
set computing) architectures. However, new RISC (reduced instruction set
computing) architectures have emerged, involving an 'open' alliance of suppliers
and users, that have begun to challenge the market dominance of CISC. This
commercial strategy is reflected in the very design of their products for
example by offering open access to codes to enable interoperability, and
incorporating the ability for users of existing CISC products to run their
current software (Molina 1992, 1994).
So we find that ICT developments is profoundly shaped by the commercial
strategies of the supply side-players seeking to create and maximise their
share of a globalised market. These battles are often around the creation
of industry standards. Such 'standards wars' started in relation to hardware
(microprocessors; computer architectures), but today are increasingly operating
in the area of software - in terms of operating systems and applications
programmes (i.e. at the human computer interface). Similar commercial strategies
have been played out - for example in the area of spreadsheet packages,
some suppliers seeking to exploit the proprietary advantages of their products,
and others pursuing a more collaborative strategy, notably Lotus 1-2-3 which
was offered as an open platform on which other applications could be mounted
(Swann & Lamaison 1989, Swann 1990). Today much attention is directed
towards the anticipated battle between proprietary Microsoft and 'open'
Java operating systems and principles for the next generation of applications
on the Internet.
These interactions between global (technologies, markets) and local (user
contexts) are often played out in relation to software. Software represents
the critical layer in IT systems - it forms the interface between the 'universal'
calculating engine of the computer, and the wide range of social activities
to which IT is applied. For IT systems to be useful, they must, to some
extent, model and replicate parts of social and organisational activity.
Human beings are adept at dealing with problems of communication, pattern
recognition and decision-making in contexts of ambiguity and uncertainty
- contexts which have proved difficult, if not impossible, to formalise
and appropriate within software systems. Moreover, it is through software
that the purposes of an IT application become realised; software is designed
to achieve particular purposes; its design embodies particular values and
social relationships. The various social groups involved in or affected
by IT may have different objectives and priorities. Software is thus a potential
site of conflict and controversy (Dunlop and Kling 1991, Quintas 1993).
This is particularly evident in relation to the complex integrated software
systems being developed to support the activities of large organisations.
There has at the same time been an important recent shift in the design
and supply of software involving the development of packaged software tools
- such as spreadsheets - which can be adapted by the user to a wide range
of purposes. Some of the most successful applications in communications
technologies, such as electronic mail or latterly desk-top video-conferencing,
are in the form of media, that offer little constraint on the content to
be exchanged and that can thus be applied in a wide variety of contexts.
So we find a dichotomy in software development strategies between on the
one hand attempts to designing more of 'society' (and specific contexts
of use) into the software and on the other, attempts to design 'society'
(and specific contexts of use) out of the artefact.
We can show how these conflicting pressures, between maximising the extent
to which software matches particular social settings or maximising market
size in the case of strategies for the supply the industrial software applications
- displayed graphically in Figure 1 below (Procter and Williams 1996). This
shows at the one extreme, custom software designed around the needs of a
particular user and, at the other, discrete applications (e.g. spreadsheet
or word processing software) that are supplied as cheap commodified solutions
to an increasingly globalised market. The former is expensive, but offers
solutions that are well-matched to local needs; the latter offers very cheap
solutions to particular tasks.
Figure 1 Volume Variety Characteristics of Packaged Software Solutions
from Procter and Williams 1996
Between these extremes we find the emergence of niche-specific applications,
geared towards organisation with broadly similar settings and activities
(e.g. credit-card processing); or generic applications designed to be adapted
by the user to meet a variety of particular circumstances (e.g. production
control and scheduling systems) (Fincham et al 1995, Webster and Williams
1993). One other strategy is becoming increasingly influential in contemporary
ICT applications. With the emergence of inter-operability standards, it
becomes possible to select a range of standard components (hardware and
software - e.g. personal computers, network management software, database
technologies) and to knit them together in conjunction with customised components
into a particular configuration that matches the particular circumstances
of use. Configurational technologies offer a much cheaper way to meet the
particular needs of a complex organisation than fully customised solutions.
Complex ICT systems today are increasingly taking on these 'configurational'
characteristics. Indeed, given the enormous cost advantages of standard
hardware and software components, few developers would build a new system
entirely from scratch.
The social shaping of Industrial Applications of ICT
It is in the workplace that information and communication technologies first
became widely adopted. We have much more experience and understanding of
processes of social shaping of workplace technologies than in other parts
of our life. The workplace is in addition an almost public arena - certainly
one that has been extensively studied by industrial sociology and organisation
theorists. The industrial context therefore provides a convenient place
to begin exploring the social shaping processes that surround the application
of ICT
Research into the social shaping of industrial applications of ICT has addressed
the design/ development of systems; examining the various players involved,
their concepts of the technology and their objectives for organisational
change. It further highlights the fit, or lack of fit, between these design
presumptions and the actual circumstances and requirement of use. Research
into the implementation of these systems has revealed complex social processes,
which may frustrate or modify these initial goals and conceptions of the
technology. This shows how ICT applications emerge through an iteration
between supply and use (innofusion) - in which the point of implementation
is a critical laboratory in which supplier offerings are tested and further
innovated in the struggle to get them to work under the particular circumstances
of the user organisation (Fleck 1994).
Whereas most early applications of IT were discrete technologies applied
to specific or closely-related functions, there is now a shift towards integrated
technologies which link together increasingly diverse activities (for example,
of design, administration and production). Discrete applications tend to
automate well-defined functions, and can thus be standardised and readily
obtained through the market place; they typically involve a single supplier
and a single department/group of workers within the organisation. Integrated
applications, when applied to internally intricate and diverse activities
in manufacture, can rarely be put together by a single supplier as a 'packaged
solution'. Instead, suppliers must select a range of components, and link
them together in a network. This will involve some customisation to allow
different components to operate together (insofar as interfaces are not
yet standardised). Moreover, since standard technological offerings operating
at the level of the whole organisation are unlikely to fit the precise requirements,
structures and operating practices of any individual firm, this will require
more extensive customisation (Fleck 1988b). The development of inter-organisational
systems has rather different characteristics - as it requires a range of
different organisations to reach agreement about the exchange of information.
Discrete applications
Research into the implementation of 'discrete' technologies has uncovered
a wide range of factors shaping the design of industrial technologies and
associated forms of work organisation. These factors include the economic
and political objectives of suppliers and managers in user companies, the
occupational strategies of different groups in the user firm, their skills
and negotiating strength, and specific features of the tasks being automated.
As well as the immediate features of the labour process, the broader context,
including the industrial relations system, and national culture, have all
been shown to be important.
Research has shown that the introduction of discrete IT systems into the
factory or the office brings about no single pattern of work organisation.
Though these technologies may have been designed around templates of existing
jobs/tasks, coupled with specific objectives for social and organisational
change - not only economic objectives, but also political conceptions of
how jobs could be redesigned, in practice, these expectations have only
been partially fulfilled (Fleck et al. 1990, Webster 1990). The radical
improvements promised by a range of technologies have often not materialised.
Their implementation involves a typically painful learning process that
has, to date, been repeated for each new technical offering as it emerges
(Senker 1987). User firms and suppliers have consistently underestimated
the difficulty of implementing new technologies, and the need to invest
in developing the organisation, training, and so on.
In the late 1970s, a rationalising model of technology prevailed: new technology
was seen as a way of bringing the economics of mass production and 'Taylorist'
work organisation to small and medium-sized batch methods, which had hitherto
been largely exempted. In the 1980s, faced with popular perceptions of 'the
Japanese challenge', new models of firm behaviour were articulated. Technologies
began to be promoted and assessed on the basis of flexibility rather than
just productivity. Initially, the priority was flexibility at the point
of production, through, for example, programmable equipment. More recently,
with the emergence of integrated applications, attention has shifted to
the level of the firm and its strategic responsiveness to its environment
(Zuboff 1988, DTI/PA Consultants 1990).
Integrated applications
The socio-technical constituencies involved in the emergence of integrated
IT systems tend to be more complex and diverse than with discrete technologies.
Many suppliers may be involved, together with a range of members from different
departments within the user organisation, with distinctive sets of interests,
working practices and types of expertise. Clearly, the development of integrated
information technologies is even more fluid than that of discrete technologies.
Integrated systems tend to be directed towards the overall performance of
the organisation, rather than the conduct of particular tasks. Ideas about
how integrated technologies will proceed are closely paralleled by concepts
of industrial organisation (Clark & Staunton 1989; Webster & Williams
1993). For example, in the financial services sector, integrated databases
and new methods of service delivery based on IT were seen as allowing banks
and building societies to become 'financial supermarkets' (Fincham et al.
1995). Similarly the concept of 'Computer-Integrated Manufacturing' (CIM),
in which the diverse kinds of information involved in manufacturing are
centralised on an integrated database, had an organisational correlate in
emerging notions of the 'flexible firm', which has close linkages between
its sales, marketing, design and production functions, as well as with its
suppliers and customers (Fleck 1988b). Production and Inventory Control
Systems (PICS) were projected as a stepping-stone towards this vision of
CIM. This coincided with a growing emphasis on the success of organisational
practices of Japanese firms - 'just-in-time' (JIT) - which also stressed
flexibility of production, but through rather different means. These changing
concepts of good industrial practice influenced the development of CIM technologies:
JIT modules and other elements were added to PICS software systems. Packaged
systems were promoted as a 'technical fix' to the problems of UK manufacturing
organisations. However the initial supplier offerings often had their roots
in large US corporations manufacturing complex assemblages and with very
formalised information and decision procedures. The requirements of this
software was far removed from the haphazard data collection and idiosyncratic
planning practices of many of the UK firms who tried to adopt them. Initial
implementations often proved unsuccessful (Clark and Newell 1993, Fleck
1993, Webster and Williams 1993).
Integrated IT systems are complex configurations of technical and organisational
elements, which must be customised to the conditions into which they are
introduced. Though integrated technologies were promoted alongside a vision
of the transformation of organisations, in practice it was the former which
was more immediately changed. Users were forced to reconfigure these technologies
to suit their own particular local circumstances. This process threw up
technical and organisational innovations, some of which could be applied
elsewhere (Fleck 1994). So although expectations of dramatic improvements
in organisational performance were not immediately fulfilled, despite substantial
levels of investment (Freeman 1988), this 'innofusion' process may provide
the basis for further technological and organisational development.
Inter-organisational networks
Attention has shifted towards the development of IT networks that link different
organisations ('Inter-Organisational Network/Systems' - IONS). The constituencies
underpinning the development of IONS have a very different structure to
those in company-level computerisation, where the user organisation ultimately
retains control over the interface between the various components and the
overall system operation, and has a direct contractual relationship with
all the players (e.g. external suppliers). With IONS, the number of organisations
linked to the network may be very large - indeed, notionally infinite. Organisations
may thus be affected by the actions of others in the network with which
they have no immediate contact. It is therefore essential to develop and
agree standards for interfaces and protocols for data exchange to maintain
the integrity and functioning of such networks. Organisations need to cooperate
to agree these standards.
The first IONS thus emerged where relatively homogenous, and closely aligned
groups of players were trading together intensively - for example Electronic
Data Interchange (EDI) in the UK retail sector. This oligopolistic industry
was also able to exploit the product/producer identification systems already
established for bar-coding. Existing cheque clearing system similarly provided
an informational template for the development of 'Electronic Funds Transfer
At Point of Sale' (EFTPoS) (Kubicek and Seeger 1992, Williams 1995). Once
established, these networks tend to grow, due to powerful network externalities
- whereby their value to each player increases with the number of players
using the system. The cost and inconvenience of catering for multiple, proprietary
system has motivated the search for open systems. There has been considerable
success in agreeing protocols for transmitting data between different kinds
of machines. It has proved more difficult to agree the content of messages,
as these relate to the aims and practices of organisations that vary substantially
between firms, industries and nations.
IONS, like the other organisational technologies we have reviewed, were
conceived as enabling radical organisational change, by allowing firms to
change their strategic relationships with other players in the supply chain,
securing competitive advantage, changing power relationships or even by-passing
other players altogether. However the immediate need for competing firms
to collaborate in agreeing the information to be exchanged has meant that
many IONS reproduce existing commercial relationships, or change them only
incrementally (Spinardi et al. 1996). Similarly, electronic markets, which
could have dramatic affects on competition within a sector, have often been
designed to provide 'a level playing field', that balanced the interests
of existing players while preventing any one player gaining undue control.
There is a complex interplay between collaboration and competition. This
has, for example, shaped the design of EFTPoS systems (Kubicek and Seeger
1992, Howells & Hine 1993).
Today, attention is beginning to focus upon the emerging 'Information Superhighway'
and in particular, the Internet. Although many 'social' and 'technical'
problems must still be resolved concerning issues of access, security, reliability,
usability, intellectual property rights etc., these developments are expected
to have enormous implications for business (Dutton et al. 1994, Kahin &
Keller 1995). This may have important consequences for the development of
business applications. Many firms are using the Internet standards as the
basis for their own internal systems - Intranets. A plethora of new offerings
are coming on stream, including technologies such as Desk-Top Video-Conferencing
(DTVC) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work tools. Their design for end-user
configuration and their adoption of open industry standards means that they
can be flexibly adopted - including by business users with only modest technical
knowledge. This suggests a very different kind of development process than
that used for conventional ICT systems (Procter and Williams 1996). In addition,
the features of these systems suggest that they may have profound importance
for business activities. On the one hand their provision of relatively open
communication facilities may make them more amenable tools for conducting
business activities than earlier ICTs. For example, if DTVC is able to create
communication that has the same characteristics as a face-to-face meeting
('virtual presence'), it may indeed facilitate the kinds of spatial restructuring
of activities (for example teleworking) which have to date only happened
to a limited degree with conventional ICT systems. Perhaps most importantly,
the Internet opens up IONS to a much wider range of providers and customers,
bringing business communication and services to a host of other firms and
into the home.
ICTs in everyday life
The widespread societal application of ICTs started in the workplace. This
has some distinctive features: the organisation provides a semi-public forum
for innovation, with opportunities for direct engagement between organisational
users and its suppliers.
As the price of microelectronic-based goods has fallen suppliers have sought
to exploit the huge market of domestic consumers. Supplier-user relations
are very different with mass consumer products and services - such as telematics
technologies and ICT in the home - since the supplier does not have direct
links with all its customers. The consumer may be represented `by proxy'
- for example, through market research on panels of potential customers.
However, the supplier has to take a major role in prefiguring, or indeed
constructing, the customer and the market (Collinson 1993). This remains
a rather difficult and uncertain process for many suppliers - particularly
where the technologies are consumed in the private sphere of the household
(Silverstone 1991).
Telematics technologies
It is in the area of mass communication products/telematics that we have
some of the clearest evidence about the centrality of user responses in
shaping not only the differential success of new products, but the very
conception of these products. Perhaps the most striking example is the telephone,
which was originally conceived and promoted as a business communication
tool for conveying price information to farmers, but which was re-invented
by people in rural areas, particularly women, as a medium for social communication
(Fischer 1992).
The markedly uneven success of telematics products and services (such electronic
mail, videotex and fax) points to some of the complexities surrounding the
design and uptake of technologies (van Rijn and Williams 1988). Success
of new telematics services does not simply reflect their functionality and
price, but also the extent to which they are compatible with the skills,
understandings and habitual practices of potential users (Miles 1990, Thomas
& Miles 1990). Network externalities are particularly important here
- and a technology may not be attractive to a potential user if sufficient
numbers of other users cannot be convinced to sign up - as in the case of
videophones (Dutton 1995). This may explain the uneven success of technologies
such as videotex, which have been strongly promoted over the last two decades,
but which in most countries dramatically failed to fulfill the predicted
rates of uptake (Bruce 1988, Thomas & Miles 1990, Schneider 1991, Christoffersen
and Bouwman 1992). There are important, and enlightening exceptions - in
particular the case of Minitel in France. Here France Telecom created circumstances
favourable to the diffusion of the technology, and to social learning in
innovating new services. This included making terminals available to large
numbers of domestic consumers at low cost, and creating a framework for
service suppliers to operate (including provision for charging for services
through the customer's phone bill). As a result a huge range of information
services could be made available - many of which proved commercially viable.
The history of facsimile technology also represents an extremely interesting
case. 'Fax' was first conceived as early as 1843 and the first commercial
launch was in 1865. However, this and successive attempts to develop the
technology did not meet with success (though there were viable niche applications
- for example in the technology used by newspapers to transmit photographic
etc. images to remote offices). Fax did not take-off until the last decade,
when its explosive growth was attributed to the success of Japanese suppliers
in 'manufacturing a superior machine' that was cheap and designed into an
easy-to-use package (Coopersmith 1993: 48). Only then was fax technology
close enough to the requirements of everyday business and domestic members
for them to be enrolled as consumers.
Significantly, the fax, and the other most widely spread telematics application,
electronic mail, are both genuine media, making few presumptions about the
kinds of communication they support. In this sense they parallel the tool-based
approach which proved so successful in personal computing.
IT in the home
The consumption of IT in the home remains a largely private sphere, with
only weak, and predominantly indirect linkages between supplier and user
(Cawson et al. 1995). A relatively small group of researchers has been addressing
the development and adoption of ICTs for use in the home, including videotext,
the home computer and home automation products e.g. the smart house (Silverstone
and Hirsch 1992, Cawson et al 1995, Berg and Aune 1994). This work highlights
the complexity of the household as a focus of innovation. Domestic users
(and refusers) are not homogeneous; their responses are differentiated by
gender, generation and class, and shaped in the complex social dynamics
(or 'moral economy') of the family (Silverstone and Morley 1990, Silverstone
1991).
Given the paucity of links between designers and potential users, designers
have often relied primarily upon their own experience and expertise; starting
from their understanding of technological opportunities and imagining how
these might be taken up in their own households - which may be far from
typical (Cawson et al 1995). This may cause problems in the acceptability
of ICT offerings. Perhaps the most obvious example today is the 'baroque'
design of most contemporary video cassette recorders - which the vast majority
of consumers find very difficult to use. Similarly, suppliers' lack of understanding
of 'the housewife' as a possible user, and of 'her' needs, means that technologies
in the area of the smart house reflect technology-push rather than user-need;
they have not really addressed the realities of domestic labour and have
had little appeal to many customers (Berg 1994b). This may be one reason
why the adoption of domestic IT has often fallen far short of expectations
(Thomas and Miles 1990).
The case of the home computer provides an illustration of how technologies
are appropriated by domestic users (Silverstone and Hirsch 1992). The evolution
of this technology became subject to a web of competing conceptions articulated
by various players: government, suppliers, parents, children. Though initially
promoted as a means of carrying out various 'useful' activities (word-processing,
household accounts, and in particular as a support for educational programmes),
this was largely subverted by consumers in the family. In particular boys,
though possibly pressurising their parents to acquire a computer for educational
reasons, were really interested in using them for playing computer games.
Indeed their enormous interest in computer-games has shaped the evolution
of home computers, leading to the creation of a specialised market for these
products (Haddon 1992).
The final consumer may have little opportunity to engage upon the design
and development of mass-produced goods, such as domestic ICTs (Cockburn
1993). However, even in this setting it is important to acknowledge the
scope for these actors to articulate their own representations of technologies
and uses which may differ from those articulated by technology suppliers
(Sørensen and Berg 1992, Akrich 1992, Cockburn 1993). Where products
are embraced by households, consumption continues to be an active process,
involving decisions to purchase the technology and appropriate it within
the household - in terms of where it is located and how it is incorporated
within family routines (Silverstone and Morley 1990). Although the designer
may seek to prefigure the user - and thus implicitly to constrain the ways
in which the product is used - the final user still retains flexibility
in the meanings they attribute to technologies, and in choices about the
artefact will be appropriated. This often involves innovation by the consumer
- using technology in ways not anticipated by the designer (Berg 1994a).
A Model of Innovation in Multimedia
The future of multimedia - the importance of social learning
Multimedia refers literally and most generically to the facility to present
information in a variety of media (for example, voice, and graphics as well
as text) through a single integrated channel. Today it is used more specifically
to refer to the expected convergence of information and communication and
broadcasting technologies, involving the installation of high-speed broadband
communications networks, coupled with advances in processing power and usability
of information technology, enabling the storage, processing and transmission
of large volumes of digitised information creates the scope to handle graphics
(static and animated) and sound as well as text. Multimedia thus does not
refer to a particular technology, but to a cluster of innovations. Their
ability to make information technology systems easier and more engaging
to use underpin expectations of the rapid adoption of a new cluster of technologies
under the rubric of multimedia, and the further expectation that applications
based upon these converging technologies will rapidly become widely adopted
in many areas of working and social life, and have profound social and economic
implications.
Equally, the key aspect of Multimedia does not reside in any particular
technical feature, but in the increased control and choices it offers for
processing information. In this, two features are salient - interactivity
between the user and the product or other users (for networked products)
and 'multimedia-ness' - the scope to present data through more vivid forms
than simple text (i.e. voice, graphics, moving images). There are a variety
of alternative technical paths for delivering essentially the same kind
of functionality, and there is little certainty at this stage about which
technical routes will eventually succeed.
The development of multimedia is surrounded by enormous uncertainties. Whilst
continued progress can be expected in the performance of the generic technical
components (e.g. increasing information processing power) there is much
less agreement about how these will be configured into delivery systems
and about which applications will succeed..
Though significant technical obstacles remain (e.g. regarding the reliability
and security of transactions across the Internet) perhaps the most profound
uncertainties surround the social uptake and use of the new products and
services. This is an area where we have very little direct experience or
relevant knowledge. Indeed one of the key features of 'the multimedia revolution'
to date is that it has primarily been driven by the perspectives of suppliers
of equipment and services, informed largely by their expectations of what
might be technically feasible. There is remarkably little evidence concerning
the nature and extent of user demand. This may not be surprising insofar
as few exemplars of these future services have been created to date - so
there is little possibility to assess their attractiveness to the user.
Most of the multimedia applications that have emerged to date are markedly
conservative innovations - often simply on-line replicas of existing products
and services. This represents a very rational strategy by suppliers seeking
to minimise uncertainty, drawing on their existing expertise and links with
existing customers. However, as we show below, the experience of earlier
generations of technology suggests that the main products and services that
eventually prevail in the future information society may well be far removed
from the embryonic offerings available today. It is extremely difficult
for suppliers to assess what user requirements will emerge - and supplier
mis-perceptions have led to market failure of a number of new offerings.
Suppliers of new products and services are forced to operate in a context
of only limited information and considerable uncertainty about 'the user'
and 'their needs' and how they might be satisfied by multimedia. Moreover
'users' and 'user needs' are not pre-existing and static entities, but emerge
and evolve through an interaction between supplier offerings and user responses.
In some ways, the supplier can be said to 'construct the user' - or rather
to seek so to do. The key questions about the future of multimedia thus
concern the engagement between supplier and user.
If multimedia is to become widespread, we suggest that an important feature
of its evolution will be a highly distributed process - that we describe
as social learning - involving a range of suppliers, promoters and intermediate
and final users (Procter and Williams 1996). There has been some recognition
of the importance of such social learning processes in the proliferation
of social experiments, pilot projects and commercial trials of multimedia
and related technologies (for example interactive-TV).
Multimedia as configurational technology
The concept of configurational technology is also highly relevant to understanding
these developments. In particular it provides a schema for understanding
how contradictory requirements are reconciled - in particular the tensions
between global technological development and its local appropriation, and
how supplier offerings may be matched to local user requirements. Like other
rapidly changing complex technologies, multimedia is heterogeneous, combining
offerings from a range of different suppliers to meet particular requirements,
affording considerable flexibility in development, implementation and use.
The concept of technological configurations can be applied at two levels:
i) to highlight the way that a range of component technologies (fibroptic
cable, microprocessors, software tools) are assembled into particular configurations
in terms of delivery systems (for example public kiosks, interactive TV
or networked personal computers taking these systems into the home);
ii) to show how these delivery systems are themselves configured to the
purposes of the particular networked multimedia applications that run upon
them (for example teleshopping, on-line newspapers, games, interactive TV
services). This is summarised in figure 2 below (Collinson 1996).
APPLICATIONS Specific configurations - services, applications and products,
within particular sectors and contexts video-on demand
tele-shopping
CD-I education packages
video-conferencing
electronic cash-cards
DELIVERY SYSTEMS Combinations of technologies for storage, display, delivery,
distribution CD-ROMs,
PDAs
Interactive-TV
/set top boxes
The Internet and services
COMPONENTS basic building blocks that can be combined to enable product
and system development microprocessors,
video standards
ISDN bandwidth
screen resolution
software tools
compression techniques
definition examples
Figure 2 The Three Layer Model of Innovation in Multimedia
adapted from Collinson 1996
The importance of this schema is in charting the complexity of the innovation
process underpinning the emerging information infrastructure. In particular,
it opens up for examination the level of autonomy between the different
levels. It suggests that certain components can be used in a variety of
different platforms and applications, and can be put together in different
ways with different social and technical characteristics and implications..
In terms of the influence of the user and social learning processes on multimedia
the key social shaping processes concern the development and implementation
of applications and their attendant delivery systems. It is here that the
most salient societal choices about the character of the information superhighways
and the applications running upon them will be made. For example some kinds
of delivery system will be closely dedicated to particular kinds of application
(for example, an interactive television terminal) - while others will provide
a more open platform on which a range of networked services can be mounted
(for example a personal computer linked to the Internet). These choices
about the flexibility of the delivery system will therefore have important
social implications - concerning the types of applications that the mass
of users will readily be able to access, and the range of roles that these
consumers will have. For example, will they mainly be passive consumers
of informational products (on a broadcasting model) or will they be able
to engage in more interactive uses, or will they even be information producers
in their own right. This range of scenarios encompasses very different images
of the character of the future 'Information Society'.
The significance of these processes are heightened by 'path dependencies',
which are particularly pronounced with network technologies like multimedia.
A number of application areas are likely to be the 'key drivers', bringing
networked multimedia products into the home and workplace, and establishing
models for other products and services, which may in turn constrain the
kind of further applications that can be mounted upon them. The first widespread
application will involve enormous sunk investments, by suppliers and users.
This could be an important influence upon the shape of multimedia and its
societal implications in the medium term, particularly if it leads to the
widespread implementation of delivery systems and devices that are dedicated
around the requirements of those specific applications (e.g. video-on-demand)
rather than offering more flexible configurations (e.g. networked PCs).
Public policy could be an important influence - particularly in relation
to regulatory etc. requirements for the use of open standards and inter-operability
between services - though this will also be affected by the strategies of
commercial providers and the balance they adopt between collaboration and
the competitive pursuit of closed, proprietary solutions.
Conclusion
The future of multimedia is still open. Today a new generation of products
and services are being envisaged around the development of 'multimedia'
technologies (Collinson 1993, Cawson et al. 1995) and the 'information superhighways'
that could bring digitised video and sound, as well as text messages, into
the home. A plethora of products are being launched for the workplace (Procter
and Williams 1996). Central and local government are investing in developments
- particularly in relation to education. Huge markets are anticipated for
new products that are interactive, easier to use, and more engaging. However,
as this review has shown there is little understanding of what the products
that will eventually prevail will look like (Dutton et al. 1994, Kahin &
Keller 1995).
Though choices being made today may constrain future developments, there
are enormous uncertainties - reflected for example in the formation and
reformation of industrial alliances by some of the largest strategic players
in the field. Experiences from earlier technologies are important. They
point to the dangers of extrapolating from supplier-driven perspectives
- particularly at a time when there is very little understanding of user
requirements. Two particular lessons may perhaps be paramount:
i) the first concerns the need to maintain flexibility in our adoption of
these new technologies. Let us take the example of telecommunications networks
and standards. It is clearly desirable to avoid technological closure around
incompatible systems, that might result in 'stove piping' in telecommunications
networks (Spacek 1995). We could pursue open standards where these are established,
or gateways between proprietary systems. However the search for universal,
open standards has its dangers - as is shown in the case of EDI standards.
It can be slow and result in unworkable, over-engineered solutions. Public
policies can lead to premature closure around standards which become outmoded
(for example Minitel in France may constitute an obstacle to adopting the
new features offered by Internet standards. This suggests the need to consider
migration paths, to allow upgrading of systems to be compatible with emerging
standards;
ii) the second concerns the importance of user responses to successful innovation.
Despite the huge amount of energy devoted by suppliers, promoters and media
popularisers of multimedia-based products and services, there is remarkably
little evidence about the nature and strength of user demand. The long awaited
'killer application' that will herald the multimedia revolution still somehow
eludes. Many of the first round services launched (e.g. interactive TV)
are only on the margins of commercial viability. Successful applications
will doubtless emerge. In the meantime public and commercial promoters have
recognised the need to develop better understanding of existing and nascent
requirements of potential consumers/users of their offerings. They have
even looked to social science and to social experiments to provide this
information.
Social shaping of technology research can offer important insights here.
It can also point to the need for continued scepticism. For example, we
still do not know how best to match user requirements to the new technical
possibilities - whether the biggest contribution will come from building
more societal knowledge into the design of new applications - or whether
to design generic offerings, and let final users learn how to adapt supplier
offerings to their purposes.
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