Unethical Motives and the Management of Knowledge

Abstract

Abstract This paper argues for a situationist understanding of the role and context of IS (Information Systems) development. Social philosophers analysis of 'the machine' and its dynamics indicate a mechanism of entrapment of human activity, to which information systems developments are uncritically referenced. Debord's concept of the Spectacle is found helpful in analysing this and it is our contention that Information Systems development is one of the Spectacle's most powerful contemporary mechanisms for self-preservation. Established power structure guarantee the maintenance of this, and the questions arises as to whether truly emancipatory developments are possible without a radical philosophy. Keywords Human Knowledge, Information Systems Development, Minimum Knowledge Management, Spectacle Introduction This paper is concerned with laying open the implicit philosophical underpinning of mainstream information systems developments as an agent in the maintenance of social stability, where designing for the appropriation, and formal commodification, of human knowledge and action is unspoken yet often significant goal of many information systems. This goes beyond the naively representational, to the larger aim of including humans as specialized knowledge producers and consumers, as a designed part of a mechanized or systematizes information system. The larger human activity system in this view necessarily takes on the characteristics of the machine, which in extremis tends towards an indifferent, closed system of interacting functions based on an essential separation. Debord's concept of the Spectacle (Debord 1967) provides an analytical framework that clearly explicates the working of this process. In this paper we assert that this is the uncritical and tacit philosophical goal underpinning IS development and we indicate its crucial potential in the maintenance of stability and the status quo