The book is not terribly interesting and it feels as though it as already not aging well.

I first encountered this title in graduate school, my copy of the second edition is full of notes and flags; it is a book I’ve recommended to others over the years. Why? It’s a good introduction (albeit with a scholarly bent) to how we arrived at our current information universe.

Have the authors succeeded in revising this classic to our contemporary context and still providing the value found in the original edition? Yes. I think it will help those who are curious about information and how we got to today. Specifically I think it will help those who want to learn how trust is gained and lost in a variety of context.

I think this is still a useful book to read. There is optimism of the “ability of information and its related technologies to change the social world for the better” but to do so, we need to understand that information and its social connectedness and consequences.

This review also appeared at https://www.pennywiseconsulting.com/2017/book-reviews-may-2017/ .

This book discusses a number of interesting theories about understanding the validity of information in the digital world.

Initially, I found it difficult to follow the narrative but by the 3rd chapter, it all seemed to make sense to me.

John and Paul provide examples of companies that have implemented various social norms in the workplace and have either failed or succeeded and why.

I particularly liked how they show that collaboration, narration and improvisation go a long way to find solutions to problems.

Rating: 3.5/5

Favourite Quote: “Learning is usually treated as a puppy-side matter, thought to follow teaching, training, or information delivery.
But learning is much more demand drive. People learn in response to need. When people cannot see the need for what’s being taught, they ignore it, reject it or fail to assimilate it in any meaningful way.”

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF INFORMATION

John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid came out with The Social Life of Information in the year 2000, at the peak of the dotcom boom.

It looks almost like a heroic act in retrospect.

Consider: it's the height of the Internet bubble, with futurists proclaiming with unbridled optimism how technology will change everything. The combination of cheap computing and an information superhighway promised to upend the known order. Businesses would streamline and people would be able to telecommute for work. No one would need to print anything; consequently, the newspapers and book publishers would become endangered species. There would be no limitations to economies of scale in an Internet economy, and thus small players (and nations) could compete with bigger ones quite handily. And so on.

Yet here were Brown and Duguid essentially saying, "Not so fast," essentially throwing a wet blanket over all the pundits. In effect, what they had to say was simple: even if technology trends point in a particular direction, it's context that will determine whether new technologies, processes, or information will displace old ones. That's what matters. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

And while that may be an oversimplification of what they had to say in The Social Life of Information, it turns out that, yes, they were quite right.

That's the main point of the book, which in many respects has aged well through the years. In the book, Brown and Duguid rail against the "6-D" vision of futurists, referring to the latter's tendency to prognosticate about the impending demassification, decentralization, denationalization, despacialization, disintermediation, and disaggregation of, everything thanks to breakthroughs in technology. In contrast, they argue that even assuming technologies would make such things possible because it becomes easier to parse, process, and transmit information, the important thing to keep in mind is that information does not exist in a vacuum. In reality, it is nearly impossible to separate information from the social context it inhabits. Therefore, to assume that it is possible to easily divorce information from its underlying context is at best misguided.

In that regard, there's much about The Social Life of Information that remains relevant today. While the authors bemoan that their work can seem like a relic–considering that it frames its points in terms of the technologies available circa the year 2000–it's impossible for their arguments not to give pause to even the most bullish of technologists. While some might be disappointed that this new edition is essentially the same book that came out in 2000 albeit with a new introduction and some notes at the beginning of each chapter, this should serve to remind readers of the enduring quality of the authors' analysis, even as the pace of technological change escalates around us.

Will not be able to review since I inadvertently missed the download deadline.

The book is an update of the first publication, and the authors compare in the introduction what they expected the digital / social world to be to nowadays reality.
It's an interesting book that deals with the sociality of the digital, i.e. the fact that successfull digital services take into account the social factor.

This book did not hold my attention longer than I anticipated. The agon started at the preface. The lines are too verbose and not directly to the point. This is not ideal for busy executives who needs to learn the nuances of information technology. However, there will still be readers who will read and like this one. Those are the people who are not busy and have more time to read. Probably more people in the business academe will like this work.

This book may still improve if written the same way as other HBR Press books.