The rational, the pragmatic and the inquiry process: The social study of information- communication systems

• Authors: Murray Turoff
• Venue: ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
• Year: 1986

When dealing with human communications and the use of technology to support this process, it is impossible to divorce the human elements from the technological ones. There is no fine boundary of measurable variables that can be established to draw the line along which we can look at clear cut cause and effect relationships in either direction across that boundary. Any attempt to make either the social system or the technological system the independent or dependent variable is only a short term artifice that might very well give the wrong indicators of what is happening. Once this premise is accepted, one is led to the necessity of viewing the introduction of any new communication technology as a series of incremental and evolutionary experiments on a total system. Whether consciously or unconsciously done, the people involved, the social relationships, and the technology are all design elements for the experiment. One cannot apply reductionist methods to the social studies of this area."Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface. He, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice."--Washington irving