The first portion of the book disappointed me. The first four chapters present a series of examples of touted technology "fads" and demonstrated how each of them hasn't lived up to its "promise" in terms of changing our everyday lives. However, the examples are, by and large, peripheral to mainstream applications of technology. As a reader, I just wasn't able to buy in to the idea that the failure of "agents" and "bots" to revolutionize contemporary life proves that technology in general is somehow "overblown." This part of the book was, in my opinion, quite weak, and didn't really draw me into the authors' message. In an age where technology innovations carry with them a host of important, and interesting, issues like privacy, encryption, and 1st amendment rights, the author's choices of topics for the early chapters seem almost trivial.
In fact, after I'd finished the first four chapters, I almost put it down and moved on to the next book in my "to read" pile. The second half of the book made me glad I'd finished it. The authors seemed to run out of ground in their original thesis and move on to more interesting territory. And, while I didn't feel like the authors succeeded in driving home any particular point in this part of the book, they did cover some new ground and make me think about topics I hadn't addressed before. Chapter 5 was a worthwhile investigation of learning in an organization, Chapter 8 painted an interesting picture of a possible future of education in a technology-driven world, and Chapter 6 was a fairly insightful and fresh (if cursory) look at how organizations are changing in light of the changes around them.
While the second half of the book doesn't redeem the first, to me it made the book as a whole worth the read. If you're thinking about reading this book, you won't be wasting your time. But lay down your expectations at the door, because this book probably won't be what you expected.
This book is just about some ideas concerning the new technology and the new world information. People nowadays know the importance of information but they always missed the limitation of it. As mentioned by the author, increased in information is not necessary equivalents to increased in the value and meaning of it. Controlling the flow of mass information became a critical issue and solutions like better processing and improved data are suggested for improvement.
The book raised an essential element in the IT world, that is the social network, which in fact is playing the core role in this new technology world. Without the help of socialization, technology cannot grow so fast into our daily life. Think about facing problems about how to operate a new version of Microsoft windows, majority of new users would seek advice from those they knew rather than seek helps from the ¡§help¡¨ menu or instruction guidelines on the internet. Therefore, social context plays an important role in helping information and technology become more valuable to human.
It is the truth that even the professional technicians cannot solve problems by themselves sometimes and what they would do is to discuss with colleagues and share experience and knowledge with each other.
I agree that information itself has little meaning; it becomes valuable only after we digested and changed them into knowledge. Without doubt, technologies can ease our learning of knowledge and save much time. Therefore, they all have close relationship with each other.
This book is worthwhile to read and I have several learning insights from it. For instance, the difference between information and knowledge, IT is not as powerful as what I think before and there are still many rooms for improvements. The author pointed out an important term, Tunnel Vision, which means looking at a particular thing in a narrow vision and ignoring other things around. Whenever we try to focus on a certain issue, we should mind the thing around, broader vision is better to help us in getting a more objective view.
In addition, it is informative in clearing our misunderstandings on IT development and there are some good points raised by the author like those I have mentioned before.
In this book you will not find technological evangelicalism or ideas about how the Internet can change the world, but you will find thoughtful discussion about why online universities need the value of the offline university, why a knowledge economy cannot be understood in terms of a manufacturing paradigm of inter-changeable parts, why Chiat-Day's unstructured office design was an interesting concept but a failure in supporting the social structure of an office, and why groups of like-minded businesses will cluster in the same geographical area even though new technologies would elminate the need for proximity.
This book is positive about technology, but asks to look first at the real impact and real opportunity. While this is an amazing book that I would highly recommend to everyone interested in this subject, I did think the delineation of new technology and existing social context did not explore emergining social patterns as a result of technological change. We can only hope for a book in the future on this topic by these authors