Binding time: Harold Innis and the balance of new media

Much has been made of the impacts of digital media on the experience of space: new modes of perception and action at a distance: accelerating globalisation; shifting boundaries between work and home life; and so on. It is less common to read about the impacts of digital media on the experience of time. Yet, the digitisation of cultural practices and artefacts has significant implications for structuring our relationships with both the future and the past. In the theoretical traditions concerned with technology and time, the work of Harold Innis, a Canadian economist and communications theorist, offers an approach to understanding the social significance of all kinds of media. He analysed how different media relate to space and time: space-binding media extend influence and meanings over distances, helping to build empires and develop cohesion across space; while time-binding media influence cultural patterns in duration. For Innis, civilisations can be measured by their balance between managing time and controlling space. If this remains the case today, how has the computer changed this balance in our own culture? This paper examines the extent to which Innis’s concepts about media still apply today

Distributed-Pair Programming can work well and is not just Distributed Pair-Programming

Background: Distributed Pair Programming can be performed via screensharing or via a distributed IDE. The latter offers the freedom of concurrent editing (which may be helpful or damaging) and has even more awareness deficits than screen sharing. Objective: Characterize how competent distributed pair programmers may handle this additional freedom and these additional awareness deficits and characterize the impacts on the pair programming process. Method: A revelatory case study, based on direct observation of a single, highly competent distributed pair of industrial software developers during a 3-day collaboration. We use recordings of these sessions and conceptualize the phenomena seen. Results: 1. Skilled pairs may bridge the awareness deficits without visible obstruction of the overall process. 2. Skilled pairs may use the additional editing freedom in a useful limited fashion, resulting in potentially better fluency of the process than local pair programming. Conclusion: When applied skillfully in an appropriate context, distributed-pair programming can (not will!) work at least as well as local pair programming

Technology Adoption In and Out of Major Urban Areas: When Do Internal Firm Resources Matter Most?

How much do internal firm resources contribute to technology adoption in major urban locations, where the advantages from agglomeration are greatest? The authors address this question in the context of a business's decision to adopt advanced Internet technology. Drawing on a rich data set of adoption decisions by 86,879 U.S. establishments, the authors find that the marginal contribution of internal resources to adoption is greater outside of a major urban area than inside one. Agglomeration is therefore less important for highly capable firms. The authors conclude that firms behave as if resources available in cities are substitutes for both establishment-level and firm-level internal resources.

Reviews

Technology‐based Learning Environments: Psychological and Educational Foundations edited by S. Vosniadou, E. De Corte and H. Mandl, volume 137 in NATO ASI Series F (Computer and Systems Sciences), Berlin, Springer‐Verlag, ISBN: 0–387–58253–3, 1994

Theoretical perspective in social analyses of computerization : an addendum

Since I wrote "Social Analysis of Computing" in 1979, more than 200 scholarly books and articles and several literature surveys have been published about the social dimensions of computerization. In addition, there have been interesting empirical and theoretical studies published in Danish, French, German, Italian, and Norwegian, among other languages. This addendum serves as a brief guide to some of this newer literature

Integrating working at home with information systems management

The history of computerization has its origin in the automation of manual processes - searching out the segments that could be put on a computer. The intended result was that the entire job would be done faster and cheaper. Thus, current computer-based information systems tend to make more efficient use of computers than people. The management function, on the other hand, often seems to focus on competitive skills and salesmanship rather than on the ability to attract and hold talented people. But, such impersonal factors that have driven management practices are changing. There has been a complete reversal in the relative costs of one computer versus one employee. The cost of a computer is now a fraction of that of an information worker. Another change to be reckoned with is the emergence of computers as facilitators of human communications (Turoff, 1985). Since there are other costs besides salary that must be considered in maintaining the office workforce, some corporate managers are looking for alternatives to the traditional locational and temporal aspects of office work. Recognizing that technology for personal computing has progressed in just a few short years from video games to some very sophisticated applications, management may even consider if it would be beneficial to encourage employees to buy personal computers for use at home. One way to do this is a computer purchase program subsidized by the employer. There are many different views of what working at home really is; there is much conjecture as to the success or failure of such programs. This paper attempts to review the current literature associated with the subject of remote work and to provide a framework for further understanding. The author thanks Dr. Murray Turoff, professor at the Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center of New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey, for his help and guidance in the preparation of this paper. The author also thanks Ms. Carol D\u27Agostino, Electronic Services Unlimited, New York City; Mr. John L. Johnsen, Integrated Resources Life Companies, Fort Lee, New Jersey, Mr. Ralph S. McCrae, Control Data Corporation, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Mr. Charles W. Schmidt, Lift, Inc., Northbrook, Illinois, for their valuable input

Palgol: A High-Level DSL for Vertex-Centric Graph Processing with Remote Data Access

Pregel is a popular distributed computing model for dealing with large-scale graphs. However, it can be tricky to implement graph algorithms correctly and efficiently in Pregel's vertex-centric model, especially when the algorithm has multiple computation stages, complicated data dependencies, or even communication over dynamic internal data structures. Some domain-specific languages (DSLs) have been proposed to provide more intuitive ways to implement graph algorithms, but due to the lack of support for remote access --- reading or writing attributes of other vertices through references --- they cannot handle the above mentioned dynamic communication, causing a class of Pregel algorithms with fast convergence impossible to implement. To address this problem, we design and implement Palgol, a more declarative and powerful DSL which supports remote access. In particular, programmers can use a more declarative syntax called chain access to naturally specify dynamic communication as if directly reading data on arbitrary remote vertices. By analyzing the logic patterns of chain access, we provide a novel algorithm for compiling Palgol programs to efficient Pregel code. We demonstrate the power of Palgol by using it to implement several practical Pregel algorithms, and the evaluation result shows that the efficiency of Palgol is comparable with that of hand-written code.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, extended version of APLAS 2017 pape

THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROFESSION: MYTH OR REALITY?

Much of the prior research into information systems (IS) workers has assumed that they are professionals. In this paper we examine the characteristics of IS workers, IS work and the IS workplace, and suggest that this perspective is mistaken. Drawing on the sociological theory of professions as a reference discipline we contend that IS professionalism is an inappropriate categorization, and that such a portrayal limits our understanding of IS workers and their work. We argue in this paper that a more faithful and potentially useful characterization is to view IS workers as members of an occupational group. Within this perspective, an understanding of the occupational culture, context and history of IS workers is essential to an understanding of the IS occupation. We examine and challenge some common myths regarding IS work, technology and the IS workplace. We conclude by making some recommendations for future research are provided, which should enhance our understanding of IS workers as members of an occupation.Information Systems Working Papers Serie