Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Social Thinking -- Software Practice

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
"Social Thinking -- Software Practice" is a book of essays dedicated toward addressing the gap between social science and software practice. Reviewer Paul Duguid neatly turns the subject in on itself, raising, via his examination of several of the essays, the social nature of software construction (or, why software engineers aren't always to blame for bad software). For example: "Sadly the insight isn't taken a great deal further so we don't get much sense of the possible contributions theories of organization might make to understanding this gap. Such theories should help explain why corporate software is not, as some social scientists naively wished, inherently emancipatory. After all, economists from Ronald Coase to Oliver Williamson have argued that organizations form around hierarchy.... in trying to understand the relationship between the practice of software designers, the organizations for which they work, and related uses and abuses of power."

Today: 6 Total: 6 [Direct link] [Share]

Image from the website


Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

Copyright 2024
Last Updated: Nov 04, 2024 3:06 p.m.

Canadian Flag Creative Commons License.

Force:yes