The control revolution: technological and economic origins of the information society
The control revolution: technological and economic origins of the information society
The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.)
The sciences of the artificial (3rd ed.)
Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
Sorting things out: classification and its consequences
The control devolution: ERP and the side effects of globalization
ACM SIGMIS Database - Special issue on critical analyses of ERP systems: the macro level
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
Writing Space: The Computer HyperText, and the History of Writing
Writing Space: The Computer HyperText, and the History of Writing
The New Science of Management Decision
The New Science of Management Decision
From Control to Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures
From Control to Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Information Infrastructures
Modernity and Technology
Risk Mitigation in Virtual Organizations
Organization Science
Organizing technologies of vision: Making the invisible visible in media-laden observations
Information and Organization
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This paper examines some of the implications associated with the growing complexity of the contemporary world, consequent upon the expanding economic and organizational involvement of ICT-based systems and artefacts. Drawing on Luhmann, traditional forms of technological control are analyzed in terms of functional simplification and closure. Functional simplification involves the demarcation of an operational domain within which the complexity of the world is reconstructed as a simplified set of causal or instrumental relations. Functional closure implies the construction of a protective cocoon that is placed around the selected causal sequences to ensure their recurrent unfolding. While possible to analyze in similar terms, current developments, as manifested in the diffusion of large-scale information systems and mostly the internet spin a web of technological relations that challenge the strategies of functional simplification and closure and the organizational practices that have traditionally accommodated them.