Let's all freak out about technology!

In chapter 3, Brown and Duguid talk about the evils of forcefully splitting people apart and forcing them to work alone, namely the Chiat/Day anecdote. They also talked about how all the predictions that everyone will be working from home have proven false.

Chiat/Day's experiment failed and people still work in offices for one very basic and obvious reason: human beings are social animals. We will always form groups, we will always help each other out, and we won't dehumanize ourselves.

With the proliferation of every new technology, from telegraphs to television to Blackberries, people argue that society is dying and that everything is going downhill. It's not. If we can survive the Industrial Revolution, which upended everything, then we can survive the Internet.

Brown also talks about how crappy technology is and how it hampers work. Very true - then. Now the tools are much better and problems happen much less often. (Although I hear horrible things about Dell laptops. My friend has had to have his hard drive replaced four times, each time under warranty.) But tools are better now, and will continue to improve.

Incidentally, I find it hilarious that these guys worked for Xerox for so long because both my parents worked for Xerox, my dad for 25 years and my mom for two years or so. I didn't understand it then, but now I get that they constantly complained about how ill-organized the company is. It's really funny to me to know exactly where these guys are coming from.