Unintended consequences of ICT

1. Unintended consequences of ICT Dilemma for Managers: A dialectic between optimism and pessimism

2. Provocations • What possible consequences can be extreme along the ICT potential for goods? • Can the ICT impacts steer toward positive outcomes? • What range do ICT managers work beyond ICT projects themselves? • What scenarios can be pursued in light of potential negative consequences?

3. Utopia vs. dystopia • 「烏」托邦vs. 「敵」托邦 • A plausible description of an alternative or future society • A less satisfactory descriptive world

4. Utopian context • How much work needed is generated presumably by a supply/demand forecasting module, and then job hours of work are determined by the entire worker pool bidding for what they want. • ICT in general supports our better instincts for how we want to live. However, at issue is who decides what is better or worse.

5. Dystopian context • George Orwell’s 1984 describes how modern technology can be used to mold the individual so that our essential striving for humanness is nearly eradicated. • In usual, A constrained optimization approach has to be adopted.

6. Examining the ICT utopia • For the society • The problem of information terrorism • The have-not issue—prerequisites & incommensurable institutions • For the organization • Strangulation by the best practice—slaved in the dominant design • The machine model of organization triumphant • For the individual • Personal privacy • Over-connectedness

7. The rose-colored world • Inherent optimism about technology and the future • Bad news is not welcome • Belief in technological determinism as a force for good • Technology as religion—techno-morphized culture

8. Taking off the rose-colored world • A legislative approach • A public order supplemented to the private order • A search for systemic instabilities • Watch out the non-linear-like dissemination of bad news searching the possible out-of-control feedback loop leading to disastrous catastrophes • A search for critical technological uncertainties • Negative consequences

9. Examples of unintended consequences • ICT’s ability to create, collect, analyze and retrieve vast amounts of information • -totalitarian control, information overload, context/content confusion • ICT’s ability to facilitate and coordinate the interconnection of people, organizations, markets and societies • -cultural homogenization, loss of human contact, job obsolescence, devaluation of real estate markets

10. Examples of unintended consequences (cont.) • ICT’s ability to accelerate the pace of business and daily life • -little distinction between business and home environment, dangerous stress levels in daily life • ICT’s ability to informate the organization • -weakening of social contact within the organization, too lean to possess a special managerial experience

11. Examples of unintended consequences (cont.) • ICT’s ability to appropriate mental assets • -critical expert system and rules fail to mach reality and distract from concentration, an imbalance in favor of relational as opposed to contextual thinking, core process expertise as rigidity because of lacking maintenance • ICT’s ability to present us with a very large variety of mental models • Over-immersion in addictive models (living on the screen?) lacking of the criteria for evaluating models, Choice overload

12. Utopian/dystopian scenarios • Rising escalation • Global anti-information terrorism defense • Trapdoor • To be a prudential person before being an economic one

13. A road to navigation • Orientation to problem solving beyond causal findings • Coping with the interconnectedness by the systems thinking under an sociotechnical ecosystem • The philosophy of design school beyond the objective observation of bystander • Searching the implementable mechanism/governance through continuous feedback and adaptation for the ultimate effectiveness • Research on the action context • Learning from the practitioners

14. Extending readings • Benjamin, Robert and Eliot Levinson (1993), “A Framework for Managing IT-enabled Change,”Sloan Management Review, 34(4), pp.23-33. • Mintzberg, Henry (1994), The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, Free Press, New York, NY. • Simon, Herbert A. (1996), The Sciences of Artificial, 3rd ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA