Paul Duguid

This book touches on many aspects of information and knowledge in organisations and education that we covered as part of my Information Management degree so I'm actually surprised I never came to read it then. Despite being published in the late 1990s, it still feels relevant— in some aspects things haven't really changed much after fifteen years of technological advances.

A book for class, and this one wasn't that great. The central thesis is that information cannot be looked at separately from the social context it exists in. There is a tendency among "technology people" to look at information in isolation, and often even to redefine the world in info-centric ways that trivialize the social networks that support it. An example is tech support in offices: everything only runs smoothly because when the new program crashes your computer, Ted three cubicles down show more had that happen to him last week, and can help you with it. Overall it's a good point and an interesting look at what I'm going to call the "sociology of technology."

The book didn't grab me, though, and might have worked better as an article. Also (and this isn't really the author's fault, but it did majorly contribute to my opinion) the book was written in 2000 and it's about technology. Most of the points it makes are still relevant, but almost all of its examples were out of kilter with the way things actually work these days. Assumptions about what was going to "stick" that didn't, and so on. It's unfortunate, I guess, since the book was on an interesting subject and didn't really rely on totally up-to-date technology, but tech books just date really quickly and none of the examples seemed quite relevant anymore.

Oh well. If you can get past the dating, I'd say this book was 4 stars. If not, maybe 2 1/2 or 3? show less

This book reports on ethnographic studies about how people use, share, and store information at work. While the book is comprehensive, and discusses interesting concepts like the the office go to person (and what to do when they leave), it is not as engagingly written as many of the books on this list, and as such not as highly rated.

Good stories of how Xerox repair people actually did their work, involving gossip after hours and idle chit-chat.