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Searching for Wholeness: When employees want to use familiar digital tools to unify their lives

Searching for Wholeness: When employees want to use familiar digital tools to unify their lives Patricia Galloway, PhD, CDP School of Information University of Texas at Austin Office organization and the advent of personal computing Green-screen, centralized systems: 1960s-70s

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Searching for Wholeness: When employees want to use familiar digital tools to unify their lives

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  1. Searching for Wholeness:When employees want to use familiar digital tools to unify their lives Patricia Galloway, PhD, CDP School of Information University of Texas at Austin

  2. Office organization and the advent of personal computing • Green-screen, centralized systems: 1960s-70s • Standalone personal computers (typewriter substitutes, paper output): 1980s • Networked personal computers (advent of network-centric management): 1980s-90s • Internet-connected personal computer networks (open to the world): 1990s-2000s

  3. Access to personal computers • 1980s: mostly at work, rarely at home • 1990s: home computers become more common (1 per home); Internet via dialup • 2000s: home computers become the norm (now in multiples); Internet via broadband or (increasingly) wireless

  4. Who are “millennials”? • Our students (or children): born 1987-1997, grown up with a mouse in their hands • Most are computer-comfortable, many activities computer-supported • Make use of all kinds of digital devices • Most of the devices are portable and web-enabled

  5. The Web for personal use • Social networking: Myspace, Facebook … and Ravelry • Photo (Flickr) and video (YouTube) sharing • Podcast television, MP/3 downloads, film downloads • Bill paying, tax preparation • Blogging/microblogging • Keeping track (RSS; delicious, digg, reddit) • Advice on everything • And email: for file management

  6. Web 2.0 Meme Map, Tim O’Reilly, 2005

  7. New workers bring changes in the workplace • As students, millennials became accustomed to cloud services: “free” and available everywhere • Learned how to do their own system integration • Became accustomed to computing at home and at work, without drawing a line between the two • As employees, they expect no less (and now it is much easier to use preferred technologies) in a wireless environment and from multiple platforms (cell phone, laptop, iPod, GPS…)

  8. Relevance of technological convergence • Two April Fool stories, 2009: • Guardian newspaper shifting to tweets • Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley/Blackwell merger • All digital all the time • Work: knowledge/information economy • Play: music, TV, film, gaming • Life tasks: Google as universal advisor • Linked to media convergence: single vendor for phone, Internet, television

  9. Examples: Centrality of Google • Experiment tested people using Medline Plus to search for medical information; preferred to search generally using Google • CACM article April 2009 points to superior Google Scholar citation accuracy for computer science compared to ISI Web of Science

  10. Result: supposedly ungovernable recordkeeping (without borders) • Blackberry addiction in the White House • Use of familiar tools to get the job done • Online collaboration: Googledocs, wikis • Scheduling: Doodle polls • Desktop applications as web services • Devotion to the subversive desktop metaphor • Avoidance of restrictions on technology (Little Brother)

  11. Web 2.0, cloud computing: what is the attraction? • Reluctance to learn ways of working judged retrograde • Universal tool: the browser • Illusion of keeping everything in one place • Example: multiple email accounts feeding cloud account • Ability to communicate the same message to a specific community sumultaneously (comparable to the “immutable mobile” book)

  12. RIM solution I: Gulag • Locally-managed “cloud chamber” behind the firewall: Sharepoint example • Limit case of vendor lock-in (some opening via desktop XML) • Design basis is one-on-one sharing of conventional desktop products • Collaboration, dynamic sharing, mashups limited • Access limited, structured, managed

  13. RIM solution II: Open-n-shut • Private clouds outside the firewall • Outsourced multiple vendors • Users can integrate private/work records • Problems • No easy way to integrate applications • No easy way to tease out work records

  14. RIM solution III: User agency • Users’ choice of applications • Employee use judges value of applications • Mixture of desktop and cloud • Record capture at the desk (and from the desk) • Mindful employee action • Employees retain what is valuable to them • Record classification via tagging/folksonomies • Problems • Even harder to tease out work records: requires more employee action

  15. Arguments for more liberal retention • Accountability (FOI, discovery) requires context (“nonrecord” is context) • User voluntary input enriches value: innovation emerges from information practice • Value of information assets may outweigh potential cost of retention risks

  16. Scalability Comprehensive (whole life cycle) Hardware, software, location independent Extensible Applicable to all information Proportionate and flexible User investment Marketable to all stakeholders Self-critical, embracing change Acceptable to RIM community Principles of RM 2.0 (Bailey)

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