Living Without Parental Controls

Jonathan Grudin

WikiSym 2007

Living Without Parental Controls• New technologies

– IM, text messaging, IRC– Wikis, weblogs, tagging– GPS, real-time visualization,

map mash-ups– Digital photos, music, video– Digital places and spaces

• New skills and behavior– Multimedia authoring– Multi-tasking– Emotion & engagement– Search, browse, assess, synthesize Photo by moriza. Some rights reserved.

Email in 1985

• Used mostly by students– Used by everyone

• Access limited to friends– Accessible to everyone

• Clients not interoperable– Complete interoperability

• Conversations ephemeral– Conversations saved

• Chosen for informality– Became the formal option

• Organizational distrust:Chit-chat? ROI?– Mission-critical technology

IM in 2005

• Used mostly by students– Use spreading rapidly

• Access limited to friends– Pressure to remove limits

• Clients not interoperable– Pressure for interoperability

• Conversations ephemeral– Recording is more common

• Chosen for informality– Becoming more formal

• Organizational distrust:Chit-chat? ROI?– Will be mission-critical!

Starting With Students

is evolvingand today

Human Nature & Social Organization

Human nature does not change• Groups: Millions of years

• Organizations: A few thousand years

• Communities: A few thousand years or less

Technology Is Changing Fast

Human Nature & Technology Change

1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

SIZE,COST, ETC.

MAINFRAMES

MINICOMPUTERS

MICROCOMPUTERS

HAND-HELD

Barn

Room

Desk

Cabinet

Palm

Invisible EMBEDDED

VACUUM TUBES

Office Systems

Human Factors and Ergonomics

(Management) Information Systems

Computer-Human Interaction (CHI)

Ubicomp

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Reasoning About Nonlinear Growth

Psychological Studies & EffectsEven when aware of non-linear growth, we reason poorly about it

• Seeing more data doesn’t help us anticipate!

• When it happens, we misattribute effects

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Visualizing exponential growth: On the left, with the y-axis adjusted, a rapid rise is always present. As time goes on, there is a longer tail, i.e. a longer period of no change as seen in the scale currently of interest. As noted on the right, this creates a false sense of security. See column in ACM Interactions magazine, November-December 2006.

Visualizing Exponential Growth

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1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

TX-2

PDP 1, 7

Alto

AltairPC Ma

c

GUI-capable

HCI focus (HF, CHI)

Approximate costs in 2006 US dollars

SIZE,COST, ETC.

MAINFRAMES

MINICOMPUTERS

MICROCOMPUTERS

HAND-HELD

EMBEDDED

VACUUM TUBES

Barn

Room

Desk

Palm

Invisible

1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

Cabinet

Photo by moriza. Some rights reserved.

Impacts of Hardware Changes

HardwareR&D

SoftwareR&D

UserInterfaceR&D

ConsumerBehavior

Organizational& InstitutionalBehavior

1970s 1985 2000 2015?

Emerging technologies…

Multiplayer Games & Group Behavior

• New ways to form and organize groups• New ways of viewing the world• New approaches to learning

Wikis in the Workplace

• Advantages– Lightweight– Accessible

• Challenges– Motivation– Management

• Ideal niche:– Recognized need

to communicate– Clear division of

labor– Firm deadlines

Is This a Wiki?

• Categories of most weblogs today1. Public personal interactive diaries2. ‘A-list’ bloggers on politics, technology, events, cool stuff

• Corporate use progression– Incoming: event coverage– Incoming: monitor comments on your products– Externally-facing: tremendous ability to put human face

on your enterprise– Internally-facing: approach to project visibility and

knowledge management

Weblogs in the Workplace

Managing Knowledge: Challenges & Potential Solutions

• Digital documents are difficult to find– Adding metadata is work– People disagree on labels

► Tagging – lightweight, visible, bottom-up (flickr, del.icio.us)– Is ontology overrated?

• Documents are difficult to assess– Context missing

► Project weblogs linked to document repository– Like a project “Read Me” file, or comments on code

• So people bypass system– Expertise locator software hasn’t succeeded

► Search technologies, browsing skills will contribute

• More life is online• Engaging• Lightweight, inexpensive

Why organizations slower to adopt?• Older user population• Security concerns and firewalls• Productivity concerns• Critical mass barrier:

– 1% adoption by a group = no one

– 1% adoption within an organization = failure

– 1% adoption by Internet users = huge success

Why Web-Based Community Software Thrives

All This Opportunity– Any Constraints?

– IM, text messaging, IRC– Tagging, weblogs, wikis– GPS, real-time visualization,

map mash-ups– Digital photos, music, video– Digital places and spaces –

virtual worlds, games, avatars, personas

– Multimedia authoring– Multi-tasking– Emotion, engagement added

to perception & cognition– Search, browse, assess,

synthesize

Group Functions (McGrath, 1991)

ProductionGroup

well-beingMembersupport

InceptionProductiondemand andopportunity

Interactiondemand andopportunity

Inclusiondemand andopportunity

Problem-solving

Technicalproblem-solving

Role networkdefinition

Position andstatusattainments

Conflict resolution

Policy resolutionPower andpayoffdistribution

Contributionand payoffdistribution

Execution Performance Interaction Participation

Transformation…

Oral, Literate & Digital Societies

Oral Literate Digital

• Aggregative • Analytic • Synthetic

• Redundant • Sparse • Multiform

• Homeostatic • Cumulative • Dynamic

• Traditionalist • Experimental • Innovative

• Situational • Abstract • Universal

• Empathic • Objective • Tolerant

A Major Challenge

• We evolved to live in a world of ‘here and now’

– Dangers & opportunities immediate

– Emotion & status expressed directly

– Informal conversation was important

– Social conventions guided behavior

A Major Challenge

• Technologies enable influence across time and space

– Actions have effects in other times & places

– Inappropriate emotional responses

– Informality is difficult

– Social control turns to policy & law

• Digital technologies accelerate change

– From local or ‘situated’ activity to global visibility: we act on a world stage

– Our actions follow us, frontiers & fresh starts are gone

Repression or tolerance?

How Do We Reconcile Policy and Practice? Rules and Behavior?

• Greater visibility exposes inconsistencies, violations, & uneven enforcement

• Recording these problems forces us to confront them• As technology is more deeply integrated into lives,

it exposes ever more deviation

On one hand:• How we believe people behave• How we think they should behave• Laws• Regulations• Policies• Procedures• Social norms

On the other:

• How people actually behave

Top-Down Enforcement Can Be Problematic

• Activity is highly contextual• Unforeseen contingencies & problem-solving are common• Policies & procedures are often provisional:

• Goals, guidelines or possible approaches• To enforce caution or warn against excess• May conflict or be overly general• A “final court of appeal”

Some emerging products enable people who don’t know how others work to enforce compliance by pushing a button.

Understanding and Negotiating

• Sometimes, behavior will be constrained to fit policy• Sometimes, more nuanced rules will emerge• Understanding and tolerance will increase

How difficult will the adjustment be?

?

Living Without Parental Controls

Jonathan Grudin

WikiSym 2007

Photo by moriza. Some rights reserved.