Analyzing Visons of Electronic Publishing and Digital Libraries

 
 
 

Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics SLIS Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405-1801

Roberta Lamb Department of Information Technology Management  College of Business Administration University of Hawaii Honolulu, HI 96822-2223

Appears in: Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier. Editors: Gregory B. Newby and Robin P. Peek. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press., 1996.

Abstract

In this chapter we examine assumptions implicit within many social analyses of computerization, and we compare them to those found in the analyses and debates about electronic publishing and digital libraries. The debates about electronic publishing are often framed in terms of 'technological utopianism' or 'technological anti-utopianism'-- genres which present social outcomes as technologically determined, and which discount the potential for complex or problematic social outcomes. While utopian and anti-utopian perspectives can play important roles in stimulating change and giving people a sense of direction, they can be misleading when technology architects exaggerate the ease or likelihood of desirable social changes.

Empirically anchored genres of social analysis provide an alternative to the utopian or anti-utopian discourses. Studies which examine computerization as it is actually practiced and experienced present analyses which we find more credible. We also believe that they are more relevant to the social choices that the academic and publishing communities are likely to face as the computerization of these domains proceeds.

Even though they are more scientific than the utopian genres, the empirical sociological genres computer scientists and publishing technologists are less likely to report fine grained empirical social studies of computerization in practice. With this chapter, we aim to establish an understanding of the structure of utopian and anti-utopian arguments and to encourage alternatives which are informed by empirically grounded social perspectives.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Howard Besser, Lisa Covi and Margaret Elliott for comments on this paper and to Paul Evans Peters for stimulating discussions of digital libraries. Our colleagues, Mark Ackerman, Jonathan Grudin, Mark Poster, and Steve Franklin are stimulating discussants about the emerging world of electronic scholarship. Cliff Lynch has been an important, but tacit contributor, to this research by making the Melvyl System with several article databases (including Psychinfo and ABI/Inform) available to faculty and students and the University of California. Robin Peek's enthusiasm was the catalyst for this article.

1. Controversies About Computerization

There is a fundamental change in the world of scholarly publishing and libraries as they shift from paper-based to electronic formats. This change has been popularized, in part, by the Clinton administration making digital libraries one of the cornerstones of the emerging vision of an advanced National Information Infrastructure (IITF, 1994). Today, few prolific academic authors peck away at a typewriter. While virtually all academic journals articles and books are now produced in electronic form, the majority are sooner or later printed on paper for sale or distribution to their readers. The driving images of electronic publishing and digital libraries converge in focussing upon ways that an authors' keystrokes (and thoughts) can be rapidly transmitted to potential readers without the required mediation of paper formats, even if there is significant editorial structuring and filtering. An even richer set of images rests on expanding the scope of scholarly discourses, by using diverse electronic forums to support active dialogues and debates.

There are numerous bibliographic sources in searchable electronic forms, and some of the abstracting services provide full electronic text of selected articles. But the electronic journals (e-journals) available through the Internet come closest to fitting the image of direct communication between authors of systematic studies and their readers. In the last few years, electronic journals (e-journals) have appeared in diverse fields, from avante-garde cultural studies to medicine and even to medieval studies.

Librarians observe numerous practical problems when academics try to work flexibly with today's e-journals (Entlich, 1993). They might be rapidly disseminated and searched online. But e-journal articles are hard to read in many common workplaces places unless they are printed on paper -- such as long airplane flights and especially during landing and takeoff! Most seriously, publishing exclusively in electronic formats has yet to become legitimate in research universities (Lougee, 1994). And few university libraries have explicit collection development policies which enable them to systematically archive specific e-journals.

Enthusiasts portray current limitations such as restrained means of representation (for example, the predominance of ASCII text), uneven access to necessary computing equipment, and contested academic legitimacy as relatively minor practical problems of a "transitional period." When analysts examine electronic publishing and digital libraries in a longer time frame -- beyond a 10 or 20 year transitional period -- they rely upon a few common forms (genres) of analysis. This chapter examines the structure of these common genres and some alternatives.

Technologically utopian analyses dominate the popular discourse and are commonplace in discussions of future developments in professional discourse. Empiricaally oriented accounts which examine the ways that faculty and students actually work with computing are much less common and also less commonly seen and read by scholars, computer and information professionals, and policymakers. These empirical analyses are relatively subtle, portraying a more ambiguous world, and have less rhetorical power to capture the imagination of readers than utopian scenarios. Even though they are more scientific, these empirically anchored studies don't appeal to many scientists and professionals. It is ironic that computing -- often portrayed as an instrument of knowledge -- is primarily the subject of discourses whose knowledge claims about its impact are most suspect. Conversely, the discourses whose claims as valid knowledge are strongest seem to have much less appeal in the mass media and technological communities.

The debates about scholarship and electronic publishing contains references and assumptions which are common themes in debates about computerization. Positive economic benefits are predicted to accrue to educators and universities. Exponential rates of acceleration in access to information are predicted to occur. Advocates expect the number of publications to skyrocket, and scholarly works to be more widely available. Electronic publishing seems to have immense benefits -- in economic payoffs to university presses, by making many academic practices more convenient thereby increasing productivity, and in improving the diffusion of knowledge by reducing the barriers between authors and readers. Selected economic and legal issues dominate the debates about computerization of other domains (Dunlop and Kling, 1991; Kling, 1995). However, the economic or legal role of computerization is not the only area of concern. Other areas directly impacted by efforts to promote and establish electronic publishing and digital libraries have also become controversial:

Scholarship. How easily can electronic publishing give scholars more rapid access to wider audiences? Does it help scholars, as readers, access a wider variety of materials which are more up-to-date? Can the quality of information be adequately maintained as academic publications transition to electronic formats? Is electronic publishing likely to modify the criteria for academic career advancement and its tie to publication in paper-based journals?

Intellectual Property Rights. What are the risks to electronic publishers of unlimited distribution without proper compensation? Will mitigation of these risks lead to a redefinition of property or to litigious constraints on the flow of academic information?

Education. To what extent can electronic information formats give students the intellectual and motivational advantages of one-on-one tutoring in a way that is economically affordable? And what drawbacks might there be in the widespread use of online information into the curriculum?

Knowledge. How might the prevalence of digital information resources alter the institutionally legitimized instances of knowledge? Will the development of new institutions alter the nature of knowledge? What do the knowledge boundaries of a definable search space determine?

Worklife. Is computerization likely to improve or degrade the quality of jobs for scholars, researchers, educators, administrators and librarians? How do different approaches to designing and distributing electronic publications alter the character and quality of jobs? Can the computer and telecommunications components of an electronic publishing environment improve the flexibility of work by enabling employed people to work at home part or full time?

Social Equity. To what extent are electronic libraries and electronic public publications most usable by faculty and students with funds to buy services and/or adjunct computer equipment? To what extent do electronic publications and digital libraries enhance or diminish the tendency of our society to foster an underclass of functionally illiterate and disenfranchised people -- as information-related tasks require new skills, and using computerized services requires expertise in negotiating with complex organizational procedures when things go wrong?

Employment. How does electronic publishing alter the structure of labor markets and occupations? What is the potential for increase or elimination of jobs for librarians and educators? Do the skill mixes for computer-oriented work help create a lower class with fewer jobs and more barriers for improving their situations?

Gender Biases. Is there any special reason why professional positions held largely by women (i.e. librarians and K-12 educators) are more likely to be eliminated by the introduction of electronic approaches to information management and education, while men are more likely to be in the professional positions of specifying the requirements for, and designing, computer-based electronic publishing systems?

These controversial issues are being discussed from diverse viewpoints. As with many social issues, groups holding each of the conflicting viewpoints attempt to frame the discussions in ways which reflects and promotes their social interests (Mauss, 1975). These debates overlap, but they sometimes also have very distinct characteristics. Even within the university, the concerns that the library science community has about maintaining a knowledge archive differs fundamentally from the concerns of other scholarly communities, such as high energy physicists. Librarians may care greatly about cataloging procedures; they perform an ontological act that establishes the importance of an information item. Physicists, on the other hand, may view this act as completely irrelevant. Computer scientists may not even be aware of these debates. A markedly romantic provincialism has often dominated the communications of the academic computer science community as they have speculated on the potential applications of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, computer-integrated manufacturing, computer supported cooperative work technologies, and now electronic publishing technologies and digital libraries (cf. Hillis, 1992; Kurzweil, 1990). This discourse is useful in that it provides the larger goals and visions that move industries and societies into new domains, but it does not encourage reflection or debate on the controversies raised by technology introduction and the potential for negative social impacts or environmental side effects. It promotes a belief that the future is "safe", and that the possibilities of historical analogy with previous technological introductions can be similarly ignored.

Where the debates are engaged, polarized discussion often ensues (Dunlop and Kling, 1991; Kling, 1995). In this chapter, we will examine key social assumptions implicit within analyses of computerization. We will focus on the popular, professional and scholarly literatures that describe computerization, characterizes computer use, and portrays some subsequent social changes. This literature can be usefully segmented into five ideal type genres: utopian, anti-utopian, social realism, social theory and analytical reduction. In the sections which follow, each genre is characterized and illustrated. The strengths and weaknesses of each genre are described. From this basis, we will examine the literature on electronic publishing and digital libraries as specific instances, or as a subset, of the larger discourse on the social implications of computerization. Table 1 provides a comparison of the ways in which these genre address issues pertinent to our discussion, such as the role of technology in social change and the problems caused by technological development. As we proceed with our examination of each ideal type genre, it may be helpful for the reader to categorize these characterizations using the organization of Table 1.

Some Key Characteristics of Utopian Genres of Discourse About Computerization- Table #1A

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Some Key Characteristics of Genres of Empirically Anchored Discourse About Computerization - Table #1B

	Social Realism	Social Theory	Analytical Reduction
Typical evidence	Fine-grained ethnography of specific groups and places	Logical abstraction from empirical evidence	Empirical data examined in terms of a few well-defined categories.
Time Orientation	Present/past	Present/past/future	Present/past
Role of technology in social change (Necessity of effects)	No special role. Usually not a uniquely important catalyst/enabler of social change.	No special role. Usually not a uniquely important catalyst/enabler of social change.	No special role. Usually not a uniquely important catalyst/enabler of social change.
Problems Caused by  Technological Development	No single position.	No single position.	No single position.
Conflict	Conflict between different social groups is "natural," but the nature of specific conflicts (ie., coalitions, tactics, outcomes) depends upon data.	Theories vary, but most organizational-level or social scale theories acknowledge and theorize about power-differentials.	Conflict may be ignored or examined.
Distribution of Knowledge to Effectively Use and Understand Key Technologies	No a-priori position, depends upon specific data. Analyst may or may not explicitly examine skill/knowledge.	Theories vary. Only a few organizational-level or social scale theories acknowledge and theorize about skill/knowledge differentials.	No a-priori position, depends upon specific data. Analyst may or may not explicitly examine skill/knowledge.

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2. Assumptions About Technological Change and Progress

Unstated, but critical, assumptions which underlie social analyses of computerization frame our understanding of the popular, professional and scholarly literatures in which authors claim to describe the actual nature of computerization, the character of computer use, and the social choices and changes that result from computerization. A large fraction of the literature about computing describes emerging technologies and the ways they can expand the limits of the possible. Faster, tinier computers can make it easier for people to access information in a wider variety of places. Larger memories can make more data accessible. Richer display devices can help people communicate more readily with computerized systems through pictures and text. High speed networks, such as Usenet and Internet, link thousands of computer systems together in ways only dreamed of in 1970. The remarkable improvements in the capabilities of equipment from one decade to the next generate breathless excitement by researchers, developers, and entrepreneurs, as well as by the battalions of journalists who document these events in the daily newspapers and weekly magazines.

Some authors enchant us with images of new electronic publishing technologies that offer exciting possibilities for manipulating large amounts of information rapidly with little effort -- to enhance control, to create insights, to search for information, and to facilitate cooperative work between people. Much less frequently, some authors examine a darker social vision in that any likely form of computerization will amplify human misery -- people sacrificing their freedom and privacy to businesses and government agencies, people becoming very dependent on complex technologies that they don't comprehend, and sometimes the image of entire social groups denied access to crucial, enabling information technologies. Both kinds of stories often reflect the conventions of utopian and anti-utopian writing. Authors craft utopian and anti-utopian writings within a set of conventions that limit what they can or will say, and which circumscribe the kinds of themes they can effectively examine.

Accounts of the powerful information processing capabilities of computer systems are usually central to many stories of computerization and social change. Authors write about these changes in technology and social life with different analytical and rhetorical strategies (Kling and Iacono, 1988; Kling and Iacono, 1991). Some authors enchant us with images of new technologies that offer exciting possibilities of manipulating large amounts of information rapidly with little effort -- to enhance control, to create insights, to search for information, and to facilitate cooperative work between people. Much less frequently, some authors examine a darker social vision in that any likely form of computerization will amplify human misery -- people sacrificing their freedom to businesses and government agencies, people becoming very dependent on complex technologies that they don't comprehend, and sometimes the image of inadvertent global thermonuclear war. Both kinds of stories often reflect the conventions of utopian and anti-utopian writing. Authors craft utopian and anti-utopian writings within a set of conventions that limit what they can or will say. Even though these writings talk about social forms that the authors suggest are likely, their tacit conventions preclude their discussing important social relationships that are also likely. A genre refers to any body of work that is characterized by a set of conventions. The works that we readily identify as Romantic comedies, impressionist paintings, horror films, newspaper editorials, and popular movie reviews are often constructed with a set of conventions that make them readily intelligible and accessible. Authors and artists who work wholly within the conventions of a genre also limit the kinds of themes that they can effectively examine. Authors of romantic comedies usually have trouble exploring boredom in life and the ways that people work out sustained negotiations to get by day to day. Scholars have examined the ways that literary formulas shape fiction (Cawelti, 1976), journalistic conventions shape newsmaking (Tuchman, 1978; Campbell, 1991), and academic conventions shape scholarship (McCloskey, 1990; Van Maanen, 1988).

This chapter carries these conceptions of genre formulas as epistemological envelopes further into the realm of writing which is putatively non-fictional, writing which authors position as telling us truths about the world of computerization "out there" and beyond the author's imagination. A major theme of this paper is that many social analyses of computing are written with genre conventions that limit the kinds of ideas that can be readily examined. Conventions make works more easily intelligible. But we have found that scholars and professionals who read these social analyses are often unaware of the ways that works are crafted within the conventions of specific genres, and the ways in that these conventions limit as well as facilitate analysis and debate. A major contribution of this paper is to examine some key genres of writing about computerization and to examine their conventions.

The utopian and anti-utopian genres of social analysis are about 500 years old, and predate the social sciences by about 350 years. Authors who work within these genres examine certain kind of social possibilities, and usually move quite freely beyond the technologies one finds in use today and beyond social relationships that are commonplace today. Utopian tales are devised to stimulate hope in future possibilities, while anti-utopian tales are devised to stimulate anger at horrible possibilities. Technological utopianism is particularly influential in North America. Appreciating its epistemology helps understand an important aspect of North American thought.

A different kind of investigative strategy and genres of reporting one's insights are based on examining existing computerized systems as they are actually used in real social settings. These investigations and genres of writing that communicate them rest on the empiricist's faith that by examining the world as it is, we can learn something important of the worlds that might be. We will examine three major genres that rest on empirical observation: social realism, social theory, and analytical reduction. These are not the only genres of social analysis of computing. One can find works written with other conventions, such as expert surveys and personal reminiscences. But some of these five genres are commonplace, and others are important for developing systematic analyses. We are concerned with the strengths and limits of inquiries conceived and reported within these five genres: the two utopian genres and the three empirical genres. We hope that the analysis of these genres sensitizes readers to the way that any genre of social analysis has important strengths and limitations. We will first examine utopian and anti-utopian analyses of computerization.

2.1. Technological Utopianism

Utopian thinkers portray societies in which people live ideal lives. The first such description appeared in Plato's Republic written some 2500 years ago. But the name Utopia derives from Thomas More, who published a story of an ideal society named Utopia in 1516. In Utopia people lived harmoniously and free of privation. His fanciful name, which meant "nowhere," has been picked up and applied to a whole tradition of writing and thinking about the forms of society that would make many people happiest. There have been hundreds of utopian blueprints. They differ substantially in their details: some have focused on material abundance as the key to human happiness while others have advanced visions of happiness based on austere and simple ways of life. Some utopians advocate private property as a central social institution, while many place a primacy on shared property.

The most obvious utopian sources are discourses which the authors identify as fictional accounts with traditional devices such as made-up characters and fanciful dialogue. Other sources, such as those concerned with discourses about computerization, electronic publishing and information technologies, are shaped by the conventions of utopianism and anti-utopianism. Their authors present them as primarily realistic or factual accounts (and they are cataloged as non-fiction in bookstores and libraries).

The British author Tom Stonier (1983) illustrates the utopian tradition in writing about information technology. He ends his book about the way that information technologies can transform societies with this observation:

"To sum up, everyone an aristocrat, everyone a philosopher. A massively expanded education system to provide not only training and information about how to make a living, but also on how to live. In late industrial society, we stopped worrying about food. In late communicative society, we will stop worrying about material resources. And just as the industrial economy eliminated slavery, famine, and pestilence, so will the post-industrial economy eliminate authoritarianism, war, and strife. For the first time in history, the rate at which we will solve problems will exceed the rate at which they will appear. This will leave us to get on with the real business of the next century. To take care of each other. To fathom what it means to be human. To explore intelligence. To move out into space (Stonier, 1983:214)."

Utopian images are common in many books and articles about computerization in society written by technologists and journalists. We are particularly interested in what can be learned, and how we can be misled, by a particular brand of utopian thought -- technological utopianism (Dunlop and Kling, 1991; Kling, 1994). This line of analysis places the use of some specific technology, such as computers, electronic publishing, or low-energy low-impact technologies, as key enabling elements of a utopian vision⁽¹⁾

. Sometimes people will casually refer to exotic technologies -- like pocket computers which understand spoken language -- as "utopian gadgets." Technological utopianism does not refer to the technologies themselves, which have amazing capabilities. It refers to analyses in which the use of specific technologies plays a key role in shaping a benign social vision. In contrast, technological anti-utopianism examines how certain broad families of technology facilitate a social order which is relentlessly harsh, destructive and miserable.

2.1.1. Seductive Images and Equations

Technologists who characterize new or future technologies often rest on utopian imagery when they examine their social meanings or implications. In 1948, before there were any working electronic computers, Vannevar Bush set forth a vision of a fast, flexible, remotely accessible desk-sized computer, called "memex" which would allow a researcher to electronically search through vast archives of articles, books, and notes electronically (Bush, 1988). He wrote:

"Wholly new forms of encyclopedia will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex, and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience. The patent attorney has on call millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reaction, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, the side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time, contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples, the entire scaffolding by which they were erected. Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the records of the race." (Bush, 1988:32).

Bush continued by describing the ways in which the users' ability to associate items, gather together the useful clusters of information that showed up during the search, and "instantly" project any or all of them onto displays for selective review, fast or slow. Bush envisioned a flexible, compliant research assistant able to artfully fish through vast archives of textual information and gather the useful stuff embodied in an uncomplaining ever-ready machine. A seductive image indeed! This vision was ever more remarkable because the image of digital computers that dominated scientific writing at the time -- and even dominates scientific thinking in today's talk about supercomputers -- was high speed calculation of numerical data.

Visions of computerization like Bush's rest on descriptions of computer-based devices and their information processing capabilities. But they ignore key social conditions under which these technologies would be likely to be used. Visions like Bush's are also flawed in the way they characterize technologies, people, and social life. They emphasize the ways that a technology should work ideally, under conditions where all the participants are highly cooperative to make things work their best. Other kinds of social relationships in work groups -- such as those marked by conflict, competition, coercion, and even combativeness -- are not considered.

Computing is often a "seductive technology" or -- more accurately -- the centerpiece of seductive dreams. The seduction comes from being drawn into the belief that vast possibilities for information handling and "enhanced intelligence" are readily accessible at relatively low cost and with little effort. Some of the technological advances of computer systems are quite obvious -- in each decade, the power of digital computing hardware increases about tenfold for any given price and physical size. Advances in the power and quality of software have also been steady, but much less dramatic. However, transforming these technological advances into social advances, such as higher living standards or better educated youth, has not been straight-forward (Dunlop and Kling, 1991;Kling, 195).

Some technologists suggest that new computer technologies will address key social problems, like over-burdened health care systems, unresponsive government and educational inequity -- that technological progress = social progress. Falling prices for computer hardware, the 68060 chip, the next generation of UNIX, and a band of smart programmers will solve most of them. The remainder will be solved by the 80786 chip and supercomputers, international networks, better environments for programming languages, higher performance database languages, and some artificial intelligence!

While we are obviously caricaturing this position, we are not fundamentally misstating a view held by many technologists and futurists, and popularized by some journalists. Few writers make these claims explicit; rather, they make them implicitly by focussing attention on new (or "revolutionary") technologies while ignoring key aspects of the social environments in which they are used. For example, some educators have argued that schools could best improve their educational programs by investing heavily in computer assisted instruction without asking what kinds of equipment most schools can afford.

Many scenarios of "life in the year 2000" assume that social progress will come primarily through technological progress advanced within an overall framework of industrialization. Our industrial civilization has created the conditions for increasing our general health, physical comfort, and safety. But it has come at the cost of immense environmental pollution in many regions of the world. We have reached a point at which increasing use of energy and industrial products can lead to more smog, more acid rain, more rapid depletion of the ozone layer, more rapid warming of the planet, etc. It is possible that some solutions to these problems can also rely on computer technologies. For example, having people telecommute to work may be more environmentally sound than packing the urban freeways with more commuters driving "smarter" cars on their daily trek from home to work. There are other ways, however, of achieving social progress which do not rely primarily on technological progress, such as the development and enforcement of ecologically sound fuel and water conservation policies. Unfortunately, it is hard to find balanced accounts that carefully examine the social character of different packages of social and technological alternatives and the values which they each support.

Computerization is often bound up with the symbolic politics of modernism and rationality. Advanced technologies offer the giddy excitement of adventure with the liberating lure of new possibilities that have few associated problems. Talk about new technologies offers a new canvas in which to reshape social relationships so that they better fit the speaker's imagination. The presence of advanced technologies often serves as a sign that the computer-using person or organization is worthy of admiration and trust. Sophisticated computing systems signal technological competence, which can be conflated with organizational competence and even domain competence when few other clues are discernible. It is usually easier for casual observers to spot the presence of advanced computer equipment than to understand how the equipment actually alters people's abilities to carry out their day-to-day activities⁽²⁾. The social revolutions predicted by utopian authors, like those we are about to examine, are based on changes in ways of life, not just changes in equipment.

2.1.2. Utopian Genre in Electronic Publishing Literature

Examples of utopian discourses can be found across the spectrum of electronic publishing and digital libraries literature (e.g. Koch, 1991; Silverman, 1989; Lanham, 1993; Okerson, 1992) Authors may portray information technologies as expanding the number of choices societies can make to direct the future, or they may present a view in which the technology drives and determines societal change. As Tom Koch's (1991) vision of 21st century journalism illustrates, the perspective does not have to be technologically deterministic in order to be technologically utopian.

In describing how online databases will impact journalism, Koch begins by assessing the technological basis for its current form and by identifying the myths which perpetuate the image of objective, unbiased news reporting. He posits that print technologies have provided a means of systematizing the oral tradition. What is currently presented as the news is a series of statements by officials, proponents and various 'experts'. According to Koch, to the degree that it is not contextually based in investigated and verified background information, the "News" is essentially a replication of the oral system. In this way, he feels that news reporting serves to perpetuate the cultural biases of the speakers.

Koch sees the database repositories of electronic publishing as enabling attainment of the myth; as being able to provide an objective context within which news statement events can be situated:

"The context must come from outside, from elsewhere than the specific, journalistic event. It is this objectifying context, which is critical to the instrumental goal of public information writers, that electronic databases can provide...online communication technologies will transform the news from a system of oral transmission to one organized around print technologies. The result will empower the writer and change the context of contemporary news." (Koch, 1991:50).

Koch recognizes the other elements which contribute to the production of "News" which conforms to a functional social context, rather than myths and ideals: the professional standards of journalism, the business aspect of publishing, and the immediacies of reporters earning a living. These elements will not be immediately transformed by online technologies; but Koch feels that reporters will gain the courage to question authority when armed with the facts. The element of time is critical to Koch's argument; even though this information has been available in printed form, reporters have not been given the time to do research in libraries and archives.

Koch focuses on databases as facilities which are online, located at one's desktop, and sources of information which are easily accessible, searchable and manipulable. However, in his brief foray into an existing newsroom library, he acknowledges a few problems of learning to use search strategies. Koch communicates a clear view of how electronic information resources can empower journalists to achieve professional standards of "objective reporting" to an informed public. He brings an interpretivist perspective to bear on the current state of affairs, and relies on historical models of technological adoption when predicting the course of future events. He reassures those worried about the possibility of access only for the few:

"Just as books stored in public libraries became part of the communal knowledge system at no direct cost to the user, so, too, electronic databases will eventually enter the public domain." (Koch, 1991:287).

What makes Koch's interpretation essentially utopian is his assumption that the electronic news database is a pristine repository of objective knowledge. He maintains this assumption, even though he acknowledges that much of the contents of these databases will be those very statements that currently comprise the "News".

Utopian assumptions about computerization pervade all levels of the discourse; and are recognizable at the policy-making level. If electronic publishing efforts are to be successful, they require the establishment of digital libraries. What form these libraries will take and which social, educational and commercial needs they will service are now being defined. The most successful models, such as WWW, WAIS, STIS, ftp and gopher sites, are those which utilize the INTERNET; a government-subsidized networking infrastructure. The NSF's 1994 Digital Library Initiative seeks to expand upon these models and to fund research into selected technological issues:

To explore the full benefits of such digital libraries, the problem for research and development is not merely how to connect everyone and everything together in the network. Rather, it is to achieve an economically feasible capability to digitize massive corpora of extant and new information from heterogeneous and distributed sources; then store, search, process and retrieve information from them in a user friendly way. Among other things, this will require both fundamental research and the development of 'intelligent' software.(NSF, 1993:3)

The primary research areas selected for funding (data capture, advanced software and algorithms, and utilization of distributed, networked databases) focus on the technological aspects of transmitted information utilization. The information models being adopted from the INTERNET are examples of transmission-mode communications. These tend to shift the burden of information utilization onto the end user, where 'intelligent' software in the form of knowbots and user-friendly interfaces can be of great assistance. However, the initiative is not structured to encourage research into more interactive forms of information communication; and is not providing funding for researching alternatives to digital libraries. When the distribution of research funds is influenced primarily by utopian perspectives of technological progress, unforeseen (and potentially undesirable) consequences of well-intentioned pilot implementations or full-scale projects should not be unexpected.

2.1.3. The Role of Electronic Publishing in Informational Utopias

Powerful images that link computerization and larger scale social change have entered ordinary language through newspapers, popular books, and advertisements. Terms like "computer revolution," "information society," "knowledge worker," "computer-mediated work," "intelligent machine" and "information superhighway"⁽³⁾are catch phrases that have strong metaphorical associations.

These new terms are often worked into common usage by journalists and authors who write for popular audiences. We live in a period of tremendous social changes. And sometimes new terms can help better capture emerging social patterns or new kinds of technologies, than can our conventional language. But the way that many authors casuall y use these terms often reflects important unexamined and often questionable social assumptions.

Alvin Toffler, helped stimulate enthusiasm for computerization in these popular terms in his best seller The Third Wave(1980). He characterized major social transformations in terms of large shifts in the organization of society -- driven by technological change. Toffler is masterful in succinctly suggesting major social changes in breathless prose. He also invented some of his own terminology to help characterize key social changes -- terms like second wave, third wave, electronic cottage, infosphere, technosphere, prosumer, intelligent environment, etc. Many of his new terms did not become commonly accepted. Even so, they help frame a seductive description of social change.

Toffler's enthusiasm can be contagious -- but, because his scenarios exclude the possibilities of social and economic constraints, that untempered enthusiasm also stymies critical thought. There have been a myriad of changes in the information environment in the United States which are not at all exciting to people who would like to see a more thoughtful culture. For example, television has become a major source of information about world events for many children and adults. Television news, the most popular "factual" kind of television programming, slices stories into salami-thin 30-90 second segments and fits them to simple storylines. Moreover, there is some evidence that functional illiteracy is rising in the United States. The problems of literacy in the United States are probably not only a byproduct of television's popularity. Toffler's optimistic account, in which "whole new strata of communication are added to the social system" (Toffler, 1980:172), is hard to take seriously when a large fraction of the population has trouble understanding key portions of the current 'communication strata', such as instruction manuals for automobiles and for commonplace home appliances, like refrigerators and VCRs.

Toffler opens up important questions about the way that information technologies alter the ways that people perceive information, the kinds of information they can get easily, and how they handle the information they get. But his account caricatures the answers by using only illustrations which support his generally buoyant theses -- like many popular accounts.

Today, academic authors of paper-based materials reach the majority of their readers through the mediation of publishers (and their editors and reviewers) and distributors such as libraries and bookstores. Utopian discussions about electronic publishing often concentrate using "informational by-pass surgery" performed by intelligent agents ("knowbots") to cut out the middlemen and enable direct, unobstructed communication between author and reader.

Richard Lanham (1993) suggests that the digitization of textual, audio and visual communications will encourage reorganizations of knowledge via hypertext. Common storage representations, transmission protocols and manipulation algorithms will enable a confluence of data not previously achievable with analog paradigms. In Lanham's view, this technological capability makes inevitable a future in which the reader is the author and where copyright law is irrelevant:

"Texts are not fixed in print but projected on a phosphor screen in volatile form. They can be amended, emended, rewritten, reformatted, set in another typeface, all with a few keystrokes. The whole system of cultural authority we inherited from Renaissance Humanism thus evaporates, literally, at a stroke. The 'Great Book,' the authoritative text, was built on the fixity of print technology. That fixity no longer operates. The reader defined by print--the engrossed admiration of the humanist scholar reading Cicero--now becomes quite another person. He can quarrel with the text, and not marginally, or next year in another book, but right now, integrally. The reader thus becomes an author. Author and authority are both transformed." (Lanham, 1994)

In Lanham's future world, authority gracefully steps aside and clears a path for advancing technology to restructure authority relationships. In other discussions of the impact of electronic publishing -- those which confront the institutions of knowledge dissemination -- the commercial or non-profit publisher must be eliminated, or at least beaten to the electronic punch.

Ann Okerson (a co-editor of EJournal with Richard Lanham) postulates that the electronic medium may allow universities to significantly reduce their dependence on commercial publishing houses. In the process, intellectual property will return to its rightful owner -- the university. Unlike Lanham, the impacts she predicts do not rely upon a reorganization of knowledge. Her argument is largely economic, with benefits accruing to libraries, scholars and universities. The utopian elements of her argument are subtle, and easily taken for granted within American culture. She notes with concern that the publishing houses are also moving into the electronic medium, and she advances economically utopian arguments which might be characterized as advocating "electronic homesteading" -- if the universities get there first, they can establish a base from which to compete with the commercial ventures. This and her other references to "academic libraries, who are mapping this new terrain" (Okerson, 1992:175) evoke what Amiran et al. (1992) describe as "wild west" utopian visions.⁽⁴⁾This frontier view emphasizes ideals of self-reliance, and casts technology as the malleable tool of self-determinism:

"Technology is not the only real issue here; it is an accelerant of the problems that have been with us for some time -- as well as a potential savior. The real issue may well be how to retain for the academy more control over its own intellectual output, to achieve affordability of its work." (Okerson, 1992:176)

Toffler, Okerson and Lanham characterize computer systems as enabling technologies. Their scenarios reserve an important, although vaguely defined, role for electronic publishing. Will the technology spawn new knowledge formats? Can the universities use the electronic medium to regain economic control over their intellectual property? These questions are central for Okerson and Lanham, and contrast sharply with the central questions of authors of the anti-utopian persuasion.

2.2. Technological Anti-Utopianism

We have spent substantial space examining technological utopianism because it is a common genre for exploring the social meaning of new and future technologies in North America. And it is the genre which is most influential in the North American technological communities. But, there is also a relatively small North American literature which critically examines key claims made about the social virtues of different computerization strategies. These technological anti-utopian critiques portray computerization --in almost any form the analyst can conceive -- as likely to degrade social life. (eg., Reinecke, 1984; Weizenbaum, 1976; Winner, 1992.)

Much of the anti-utopian discussion which pertains to scholarship and electronic publishing focusses on the impending demise of libraries, on the rising rates of textual illiteracy and on the segregation of the population into informational classes based on their access to electronic knowledge resources. Other discussions involve the difficulties in controlling knowledge, from an academic quality perspective. They explain the persistence of the existing knowledge production process by asserting that it is the only thing that works; and they are unwilling to tamper with its mechanism⁽⁵⁾

Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason(1976) amplifies the underside of computerized systems. He criticizes visions of computerized databases which record historical data (like Vannevar Bush's Memex, which was described earlier), because they usually eliminate important information which is too complex or costly to include:

.... The computer has thus begun to be an instrument for the destruction of history. For when society legitimates only those "data" that are in one standard format, then history, memory itself, is annihilated. The New York Times has already begun to build a "data bank" of current events. Of course, only those data that are easily derivable as by-products of typesetting machines are admissible to the system. As the number of subscribers to this system grows, as they learn to rely more and more upon "all the news that [was once] fit to print,"⁽⁶⁾ as The Times proudly identifies its editorial policy, how long will it be before what counts as fact is determined by the system, before all other knowledge, all memory, is simply declared illegitimate? Soon a supersystem will be built, based on the New York Times' data bank (or one very much like it), from which "historians" will make inferences about what "really" happened, about who is connected to whom, and about the "real" logic of events (Weizenbaum, 1976:238) ....

Weizenbaum's observations gain more force when one realizes that journalists don't simply report "the facts." They often rely upon standard kinds of sources, voices of publicly legitimate authority, in framing stories. For example, when a university alters a curriculum, deans and professors are more likely to have a voice in the resulting news story than are students. Gaye Tuchman (1978) characterized reporters in search of a story as casting a selective "newsnet" around their favorite kinds of sources. Journalists rarely cast their nets to give equal voice to all kinds of informed parties. While reporters are much more likely to go to "the grass roots" today than they were in the days of Vannevar Bush, each newspaper prints a mix of stories in a style which reflects a relatively stable character. Usually, even if the mastheads were interchanged, one would not confuse the New York Times with a small town weekly newspaper⁽⁷⁾. Without special design, nothing in the database technology would be likely to give a user a clue about its real limitations in representing a narrow range of perspectives. And, yet, its convenience might make it very tempting for a busy professional to rely on it as a primary source, without appreciating its limitations. That is the cautionary note that one might draw from Weizenbaum's bitter observations. But Weizenbaum's argument is primarily polemical; and he may mislead the less savvy reader into belief when he speaks with authority about future events ("Soon a supersystem will be built...") and presents his speculations as realistic or factual accounts. In stark contrast to Koch's projection of 21st century journalism (presented above as an example of utopian genre), he doesn't discuss any virtues of news databases or conditions under which they might not have the deleterious problems he identifies. News databases can substantially assist in useful research, as long as they do not become a sole source of information. Professional historians who have developed strong criteria for verifying events with original sources may be less likely to become their prisoners than many professionals (and students) who find them efficacious and seductive, despite their limitations.

Bryan Pfaffenberger (1990) targets his less apocalyptic, but still largely anti-utopian arguments against the rhetoric which heralds the coming of the "Information Society." This rhetoric assures us that universal information access is an inevitable by-product of technologically enhanced information networks. In contrast, Pfaffenberger's study of online databases reveals that the information resources which are currently available online may be no more accessible, and perhaps even less accessible than their precursors.

He finds that online technology formats have preserved the information structure and content of print-based reference works, thereby perpetuating the information access requirement of specialized subject expertise. Only those possessing this expertise, and who function in professional roles which require ready access to information in a timely fashion, are likely to search online. Pfaffenberger concludes that online technology, as currently implemented, is unlikely to democratize information in any significant way; and to the extent that they replace other forms of information access, online databases may result in making information less generally available to the public.

Technological advances which resolve the difficulties of online system use, are viewed by Pfaffenberger as conservative approaches because they do not require any changes to the artifacts themselves or to their organizational or legislative forms. He cites databases which provide bibliographic abstracts that not only summarize the facts of an article, but also "rationalize" its substance making it more comprehensible to the nonspecialist; as examples of conservative inventions which have led to successful end-user searching. He suggests that, by transforming information into a commodity and privatizing information produced by public investments in university research, online technology may play a significant role in creating an information elite--the precise opposite of democratization, and not at all what Lanham envisions⁽⁸⁾. Pfaffenberger also documents the reluctance of professional societies to make their sources of expertise widely available by adding them to publicly accessed online services. He notes that

"Even though it may seem to be a good idea to democratize information, the 'deskilling' of white-collar occupations could have devastating social consequences. It could accelerate, for instance, massive and ominous changes already under way in the class structure of industrialized societies, such as the decline of the middle class and the 'proletarianization' of the white collar work force." (Pfaffenberger 1990:12)

Utopian and anti-utopian analysts share important common conventions. Their narratives are usually future oriented; they universalize experiences with technologies, homogenize experiences into one or two groups, and portray technologies as totalizing elements which dominate important social interactions. They take extreme, but different, value positions. They portray computerization with monochromatic brushes: white or black. The technological anti-utopians' characterizations of the tragic possibilities of computerization provide an essential counterbalance to the giddy-headed optimism of the technological utopian accounts. The romances and tragedies are not all identical, but the technological utopian and anti-utopian genres have some important inherent limitations which we now examine.

2.3. Strengths and Limits of Utopian and Anti-Utopian Analyses

To what extent are utopian or anti-utopian visions helpful in understanding the social possibilities of computerization? Despite key limitations, we see utopian and anti-utopian analyses as important and legitimate forms of speculative inquiry. Questions about the social consequences of new technologies are central to choices about paths for development, levels of social investment, and regulatory policies. These all merit analysis to help us better understand future possibilities. All such analyses rest on theories of the interplay between technological developments and social life. Utopian visions are sometimes characterized as "reality transcending" (Kumar, 1987; Kumar, 1991). They play important roles in stimulating hope and giving people a positive sense of direction. But they can mislead when their architects exaggerate the likelihood of easy and desirable social changes. Writing about technological utopianism in the 1930s, Wilson, Pilgrim and Tasjian comment:

Belief in the limitless future potential of the machine had both its positive and negative aspects. During the 1930s this almost blind faith in the power of the machine to make the world a better place helped hold a badly shattered nation together.... These science fiction fantasies contributed to an almost naive approach to serious problems and a denial of problems that could already be foreseen. (Wilson, Pilgrim and Tasjian, 1986:335)

Anti-utopian writings are far less numerous. They serve as an important counterbalance to technological utopianism. But they could encourage a comparably ineffective sense of despair and inaction. Utopian and anti-utopian visions embody extreme assumptions about technology and human behavior. But their causal simplicity gives them great clarity and makes them easy to grasp -- to enjoy or to abhor. They can resonate with our dreams or nightmares. Consequently, they have immense influence in shaping the discussions (and real directions) of electronic academic publishing. Their causal simplicity is their greatest strength, and also a point of entry to some crippling limitations.

Conflict

Technological utopian analysts portray a world which is free of substantial conflict. Technological anti-utopians usually portray certain fundamental conflicts such as between social classes (Winner 1992) or between government agencies and the public (Crawford, 1994) as almost unalterably unbalanced. One side virtually dominates while the other side mounts negligible resistance. Neither extreme characterizes the world in which social conflicts are important but in which coalitions draw complex lines and the intensity of conflict varies in place and time.

Practical attempts to establish utopian social schemes have been fraught with significant and complex conflicts. For example, the United States was founded on premises that were utopian in the 1700s. The Declaration of Independence asserts that "all men were created equal" and that they would be should be guaranteed the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This was in significant contrast to the political cultures of the European monarchies of the time, where the rule of the king or queen, and her nobles, most of whom were selected by heredity, determined peoples' fates. Of course, asserting this right as universal didn't immediately make it so.

Utopian ideals are hard to realize. Their advocates often have to fight hard to change social practices to better fit their ideals. Bloody revolutions were fought in the United States and France to overthrow the ruling monarchies in the late 18th centuries. Almost 200 years later, Martin Luther King and others advanced the cause of improved civil rights in the United States through aggressive confrontations: marches, rallies, court injunctions and sit ins, as well as through more quiet persuasion. These social changes which altered the balance of privilege and exploitation did not come quietly and peacefully.

Distribution of Knowledge

In utopian analyses of computerization, people have whatever skills they need to adequately use systems and to resolve problems as they arise. Anti-utopian analyses vary in their accounts of technological skills. Sometimes everyone is adequately skilled, but are using technologies in ways that undermine important social values. In other anti-utopian accounts, many people are confused about key social relationships and the use of technologies. In these latter analyses, either elites control key skills or sometimes no one has key knowledge (as in Weizenbaum's account of "incomprehensible systems."). These accounts rarely portray people's technological skills as being distributed in complex ways: with many people having adequate technical skills for some of their activities, muddling through on some with help from co-workers or consultants, or being confused about a few other technological activities.

Problems Caused by Technological Development

Technological utopians sometimes recognize that new technologies cause new problems -- but these are to be solved with additional technologies⁽⁹⁾. Buckminster Fuller argued that it was difficult and almost pointless to teach people to drive very cautiously and to harass them with rigid laws. He argued for safer cars rather than for changing human behavior. Today's discussions that focus on computerized "smart cars" rather than smart drivers runs along a parallel line. Technological utopians would usually advocate government funds invested in stimulating the development of new technologies rather than increasing the scale and scope of regulatory bureaucracies. As another kind of example, technological utopian discussions of computerization in schools emphasize the potentials of new technologies and ignore the ways that they may be unrealized when classes are overcrowded, teachers are not very well-versed in the new technologies, and schools spend substantial efforts in trying to regiment students (Kling and Iacono, 1988). By focussing on new technologies as agents of social change and assuming that social systems will use them effectively, technological utopians ignore the social conditions for technologies to be effective. Consequently, they often overstate their social value. In contrast, technological anti-utopians often understate the social value of technological innovations and the way that all technologies pose problems.

Necessity of Technological Effects

Technological utopian and anti-utopian analysts suggest that the changes they foresee are virtually certain to happen if a technology is developed and disseminated. Their arguments gain rhetorical force through linear logics and the absence of important contingencies. This causal simplification is, in our view, a fatal flaw of utopian and anti-utopian speculations. They explore the character of possible social changes as if they were the only likely social changes.

If one doesn't trust the anti-utopian or utopian visions, how does one develop a broad framework for asking questions about what should be done--in what way, and with what associated practices? In our view, the actual uses and consequences of electronic academic publishing depend upon the "way the world works". Conversely, electronic formats may slowly, but inexorably, change "the way the world works" -- often with unforeseen consequences. A key issue is how to understand the social opportunities and dilemmas of electronic scholarship without becoming seduced by the social simplifications of utopian romance, or becoming discouraged by anti-utopian nightmares.

3. Alternative Discourses: Beyond the Utopian/Anti-Utopian Impulse

A different kind of investigative strategy and genre of reporting analytical insights is based on examining existing electronic information formats as they are actually used in real social settings. These investigations, and the genres of writing that communicate them, rest on the empiricist's faith that by examining the world as it is, we can learn something important of the worlds that might be. We will examine three major genres that rest on empirical observation: social realism, social theory, and analytical reduction. These are not the only genres of social analysis of computing; one can find works written with other conventions, such as expert surveys and personal reminiscences; but these genres are important for developing systematic analyses.

Empirically Anchored Genres of Social Analysis

Not all technological utopian (or anti-utopian analyses) are equally coherent, clear, or credible. But other forms of social analysis can also be incoherent or baseless. So clarity does not differentiate between utopian analyses and other modes of social analysis. Attractive alternatives to utopian analysis should be more credible in characterizing conflict in a social order, the distribution of knowledge, the ways of solving problems that arise from new technologies, and should rest upon less deterministic logics of social change. Most important, they would also identify the social contingencies which make technologies (un)workable and social changes benign or harmful for various social groups. Analyses in the genres which are anchored in empiricism often acknowledge complex patterns of social conflict, yet are more open-ended and contingent than both genres of utopian analysis.

3.1. Social Realism

We use the label "social realism" to characterize a genre which uses empirical data to examine computerization as it is actually practiced and experienced. Social realists write their articles and books with a tacit label: "I have carefully observed and examined computerization in some key social settings that can change the way that you think about technology and social life. I will tell what I have seen." The most common methods are those of journalism (e.g., Horwitz, 1994; Dibbell, 1993; Frantz, 1988) and the empirical ethnographically-oriented social sciences (e.g., Kling, 1978; Dutton & Kraemer, 1986; Kraemer, Dickhoven, Tierney, and King, 1987; Kling & Iacono; 1984; Jewett and Kling, 1991; Ladner and Tillman, 1992; Markus, 1994; Orlikowski, 1993; Orlikowski and Gash, 1994;Poltrock and Grudin, 1995). The genre is best characterized by the efforts of authors to communicate their understanding of computerization as it "really works" based on reporting fine-grained empirical detail. Social realism gains its force through gritty observations about the social worlds in which new technologies will be used.

The following example of an IT-enhanced university/industry technology transfer program study (Lamb, 1994) illustrates how social realism can identify the discrepancies between the expectations raised by utopian genres and actual information use practices. The findings of the study are of particular interest here because the technology transfer program incorporates several of the social and technological elements that are present within electronic academic publishing.

In the early 1990s, the University of California sought to augment its program for finding business partners for licensable university-developed technologies by providing online databases to "member" firms. The databases contained information relevant to technology transfer efforts; some of which was commercially available (e.g. Federal Research In Progress, CorpTech) and some of which was only available through this program or its affiliates (e.g. University Technologies, Faculty Research Capabilities.) There were approximately thirty organizational members of the program. They had been intentionally solicited to represent a broad range of local business enterprise types and sizes; in part, to demonstrate the presumed wide applicability of this program. The databases were intended to enhance the "matchmaking" activities of the university technology liaison managers, and to stimulate technology transfer activity among California businesses and between businesses and the university.

By the end of the first year, however, it was clear that database usage by member firms was not as high as the program administrators had expected; even after discounting for program setbacks precipitated by California's state budget crisis. One firm which was closely tied to the university, and whose trained research scientists and search specialists were already using other online database services, was expected to use the program technology transfer services actively. But the firm was making only light and sporadic use of this resource. Another firm, which was using commercially available information retrieval services, was also expected to be an active user of the database services. But their staff had some problems adapting to the "easier"⁽¹⁰⁾ information retrieval program interface of the database software. The research objectives were to characterize the conditions which influenced online database usage within member firms, and to identify their online database usage and information search practices.

As the researchers proceeded with their site visits and interviews at the member firms and with UC's program administrators, they found major discrepancies between the observed behavior of the member firms and the expectations of the program administrators about who would use the online database services, how they would be used and how often. The program administrators were using the database access rates (even though the program-specific databases were not yet entirely implemented!) as a program barometer--since it was too early to have accumulated a significant number of instances of technology licensing that could be directly related to use of the IT-enhanced technology transfer effort. The program administrators held a conceptual model of online information access which is similar to that espoused by proponents of electronic academic publishing. They assumed that informational demand for online resources was high among prospective users. They presumed that end-users would prefer to access the databases directly. They thought that the databases would be accessed on both regular and irregular bases (i.e. for general and specific informational needs). While database usage might be erratic at first, they expected usage to increase over time, as people began to appreciate the advantages of online access to technologically relevant information. The administrators may have been disappointed because they did not recognize that their range of usage expectations was guided primarily by technologically utopian models of computerization.

The research study identified some commonalities of organizational structure, work processes and informational approaches which explained the observed database usage levels as not at all inconsistent with the existing and emerging information resource usage practices of the member firms. Furthermore, low levels of database usage did not signify failure or impending failure of the program or the IT enhancement. Participants at the member firms considered the databases to be a tool which would primarily assist the technology liaison managers; and they did not view their own low usage levels as significantly diminishing their chances of finding university-developed technologies. Some were relying on the "match-making" activities of the technology liaison managers to keep them informed -- just as they relied on their own information specialists to keep them up to date on other strategic topics. The study did, however, reinforce the value of implementing and evaluating pilot projects before establishing fully-funded programs, especially when the utilizing new technologies.

These kinds of discrepancies between high expectations of a systems' usage stimulated by proponents, and low levels of usage in practice have been reported in diverse studies of information technologies in public agencies (Kling, 1978) and private firms (Bullen and Bennett, 1995; Orlikowski, 1993). Electronic academic publishing efforts may experience face similar discrepancies between the utopian expectations of proponents and the routine work practices of prospective users. Such discrepancies should not, however, lead to anti-utopian predictions. Rather, they might more profitably lead to pilot projects and theoretically informed empirical research into the dependent conditions of information use and information resource usage practices. Such analyses can provide important insights to organizations attempting similar moves toward the use of electronic information formats.

Social realists vary in the extent to which they weave their evidence into tight narratives. Tighter stories can leave us more satisfied. But there is a risk that important elements that don't fit the narrative are ignored (cf. Campbell, 1991:22-23). More frequently social realism offers us compelling, frank portraits which suffer from particularism. Unlike the preceding example of social realism, many authors in this genre rarely are explicit in drawing concepts or themes which generalize across technologies and social settings from the rich literature about the social character of new technologies, or in contrasting their study with many other studies or accounts in the technological studies literature.

3.2. Social Theory

In contrast with social realism, theoretical analysts explicitly develop or test concepts and theories that transcend specific situations. Unlike utopian and anti-utopian accounts, social theoretical works are not "reality transcending." But they are situation transcending. Some examples are reinforcement politics (Danziger, Dutton, Kling and Kraemer, 1982)⁽¹¹⁾, web models (Kling and Scacchi, 1982; Kling, 1987; Kling, 1992), structuration theory (Orlikowski, 1991; Poole and DeSanctis, 1990), post-structuralist theories (Poster, 1991), Judith Perrolle's explication of social control theories (Perrolle, 1988), and Terry Winograd's (1988) explication of language-action theory.

Web models⁽¹²⁾  illustrate this kind of theoretical work. Web analyses are action-oriented and examine the political interplay of coalitions in structured -- but somewhat fluid -- settings (Kling, 1987). The main organizing concepts are a "focal computing technology" which is the center of analysis, the infrastructure which supports its development and operation (including production lattices), its context of development and use, and a history of organizational commitments which structures these arrangements. Researchers have applied web models to better understand a variety of cases, including dilemmas of developing the Worldwide Military Command and Control System, dilemmas of converting complex inventory control systems in manufacturing firms, the development of software in insurance firms, and the ways in which desktop computerization changes worklife in offices (Kling, 1992).

Social theoretical studies of computerization offer the traditional virtues of theory: relatively concise general explanations and concepts which help guide inquiry in new situations. But they are much less accessible to a broad audience than technological utopian, anti-utopian and social realist accounts because of their intellectual demands, their (necessary) use of specialized terms and their frequent abstraction from the kinds of concrete situations that readers can readily visualize and perhaps identify with.

The contrast between social realism and social theory, as ideal types, is rather clear. And it is easy to find books and articles which illustrate these types. All social analyses are imbued with theoretical assumptions, however implicit (Kling, 1980). Journalists and others who are not trained in the social sciences are much more likely to write as social realists rather than as social theorists. Social scientists are more capable of developing theoretical inquiries, but they are more likely to publish social realist discourses about computerization or documents which apply existing theory to sharpen realist accounts. We believe that there is a shortage of good empirically anchored theoretical explorations of the social aspects of computerization, in general, and of its electronic publishing applications, in particular.

Willard McCarty's discussion of the interconnected dependencies of scholarship and electronic publishing provides an excellent model for examining the issues confronting academic publishing -- one which is founded on social realism and social theory (McCarty, 1993). He explores the processes of electronic seminars and a form of "intermediate research product" electronic publication, with which he has some direct experience. Throughout the discussion, he emphasizes the duality of the technology:

"No tool is 'just a tool,' no medium completely colorless or transparent; all, especially tools of thought, are agents or at least filters of perception.... I have been speaking about the potential of the new medium; this potential is all too easily trivialized by thinking that electronic tools must do what they can do, or that what they can do will make no essential difference to scholarship or the academy. To embrace either alternative is to surrender, rather than face the challenge of understanding the two central, interrelated terms of electronic scholarship: on the one hand, the characteristics of the medium, and on the other, the kind of world we want to make for ourselves." (McCarty, 1993:94).

By combining the generalizing capabilities of a social theoretical approach like structuration theory, which informs his discussion of the duality of the nature of tools, with an empirical grounding in his own social realist research, McCarty may escape the particularism which constrains many empiricists.

3.3. Analytical Reduction

Some scholars organize their social investigations into computerization by working within a tightly defined conceptual framework. They identify a few key concepts, sometimes derived from theory or abstracted from a group of studies, and examine them in new settings. We label this genre as analytical reduction because the authors reduce their accounts of the social world and computer technologies to a few key concepts. If they adopt a strictly quantitative social science approach, they operationalize all of their key concepts into variables, measure them, and examine how behaviors are distributed along the variables and via mathematical relationships between variables (e.g. correlations). While completely quantitative studies represent ideal examples of this genre, studies which focus on a few qualitatively described dimensions share enough key characteristics to be appropriately grouped with them also.

The study by Hesse and his colleagues on the ways in which networked communications affect the productivity of oceanographers illustrates the quantitative version of the genre (Hesse, et. al, 1993). They administered questionnaires to Ph.D. scientists who had access to a network of oceanographic databases and services (SCIENCEnet.) They grouped their questions so as to measure three specific scientific productivity outcomes: scientific publication, professional recognition, and social integration. They also measured many aspects of the scientists' working environments and their usage of the network services. Hesse et al. based their conclusions on the magnitude of quantitative relationships between the variables which they measured. They found that network usage was positively associated with all three scientific productivity outcomes; and their results indicated that there was a differential benefit for peripheral scientists. The relationship between SCIENCEnet usage and publication was stronger for scientists at inland institutions than for scientists on the coast; and the relationship between SCIENCEnet usage and professional recognition was stronger for younger scientists than for more senior scientists.

An adaptation of this study could be directed toward issues concerning digital libraries; especially if scarce educational resources, expensive art collections or original manuscripts could be made more widely available through digitization. Hesse et al.'s implications for differential benefits for peripheral networked scientists might be extended to differential benefits for peripheral scholars if quantitative analyses could be extended to measure the effectiveness of remote access to critical resources through digital libraries.

In a similarly analytical approach, Iacono and Kling (1988) examined the extent to which the development of a complex computerized inventory control system could best be explained by one of three different kinds of organizational choices processes: rational decision making, organizational drift, and partisan politics⁽¹³⁾. In this study the authors presented a qualitative case study, and then systematically examined it for evidence in the form of episodes and social relationships which would support or undermine each of these three models of organizational choice.

Depending on one's view, analytical reduction represents the best or worst of social science inquiry. Those who see it as a valuable genre appreciate the way that the authors critically examine key concepts and examine the extent to which they shed insight into the social world of computing. They believe that the best hope for systematically understanding the social character of computerization will come from studies in this genre. Those who criticize analytical reduction, see it as arcane and inaccessible except to academic specialists. They usually prefer social realist studies because they are more easily accessible and identifiably concrete. Further, the quantitative reductions are less likely to characterize the shifts of understandings that participants have over time, the nature of unusual but important events, or even the occasions when computerization becomes comical or tragic.

4. Computerization, Electronic Scholarship and Social Visions

Much of the discussion about scholarship and electronic publishing focusses on the enormous economic incentives for the emancipation of scholarship from commercial publishers, on the impending demise of libraries, on the unprecedented potential for the development of new kinds of knowledge, on the insurmountable difficulties in controlling the quality of information in electronic formats, on the exponentially rising rates of textual illiteracy, on the irreversible segregation of the population into information rich and poor, and other similarly crisis-laden concerns. Empirically-grounded research into these questions can expand the discourse beyond the constraints of utopian and anti-utopian genres, and can encourage constructive, situationally-focused debate and analytically informed experimentation with the technological possibilities of electronic scholarship.

We have indicated how the conventions of genres amplify some kinds of ideas and mute others. They also make the resulting narratives accessible and attractive to different audiences. Because an authoritative presentation of speculative projection is a prominent device of both utopian and anti-utopian authors, this attention to genre conventions blurs the crisp boundaries between fiction and non-fiction.

Writings in each genre have formulaic limits [Ref. Table 1], much in the way that romantic fiction (or any other literary genre) has important limits (Cawelti, 1976). Cawelti notes that "The moral fantasy of the romance is that of love triumphant and permanent, overcoming all obstacles and difficulties (Cawelti, 1976:41-42)." This does not mean that we can't be entertained or our appreciation of life enriched by romantic fictions; it is simply a genre with important formulaic limits. The moral fantasies of technological utopianism and anti-utopianism similarly limit the way that they can teach us about the likely social realities of new forms of computerization: one is romantic and the other is tragic. We are not arguing for some simple "balance" within each account -- and certainly not for balance between the utopian and anti-utopian genres.

We are much more sympathetic to the empirically oriented genres -- social realism, social theory and analytical reduction -- than to the utopian and anti-utopian lines of analysis that we find less credible. But we see the two utopian genres as legitimate, because they help to explore the limits of the possible. Even though they are much more scientific than the utopian genres, the sociological genres don't seem to appeal to many scientists and engineers. Some technologists dismiss social realist accounts as "primarily anecdotal," and they have little patience for social theory. It is ironic that computing -- which is often portrayed as an instrument of knowledge -- is primarily the subject of popular and professional literatures that are heavily weighted towards the less reliable utopian genres. Conversely, the more trustworthy empirically anchored genres often have much less appeal in the scientific and engineering communities. We don't believe that we can develop "conventionless genres," even though we can benefit from new genres that situate computerization in credible social worlds. It's tempting to explore new genres that combine the richness of social realism with the future orientation of the utopian genres⁽¹⁴⁾.

One of the dilemmas facing analysts of emerging technologies is how to conduct empirical studies of the use of technologies which do not yet exist or of new institutional forms which do not yet exist. The most common approach has been to rely upon technological utopianism and anti-utopianism. We have argued that empirically-grounded alternatives are worth the effort. But they require a special imagination to conceive and to generalize from. At minimum, social analysts of electronic scholarship and digital libraries can learn about the concepts and theories that have proven useful and valid in studies of computerization in other domains (see, for example, Kling, 1980; Kling and Jewett, 1994).

These empirically-anchored studies can be criticized superficially as irrelevent because they examine very different technologies or technologies that seem dated. But what is most important, is that they help give durable insights about the ways that people and groups integrate new information technologies into their work. They help reframe key issues electronic scholarship and libraries by helping us see them as workplaces. Studies of computerization and changing work show that people's fine-grained work incentives play major roles in the ways that they see technologies as (ir)relevenet, and the ways they appropriate them (Orlikowski and Gash, 1994). Organizational change is slow, especially when incentive systems are not restrcutured. Work is often social, and professionals seem to value the role of technologies that expand their opportunities for interperspnal communication, even more than informtion management (Bullen and Bennett, 1995; Ladner and Tillman, 1993). Even when managers and professionals try to use information technologies to help create closeness, they may find unexpected social distance (Markus, 1994). And, in all of this, people's busyness and limited resources shapes the ways that they computerize (Kling, 1992; Jewett and Kling, 1991).

Computerization presents many important social choices to be made now, and some of them will restrict our social options in the 21st century. An awareness of foregoing debates about computerization efforts in other industries and practices may enable the electronic publishing debate to leapfrog past some of the discussional "quagmires" that have marked computerization controversies. By understanding the dynamics of utopian and anti-utopian arguments--the analytical strengths and weaknesses--members of the academic community can recognize when their debates come to terms with the real issues of technological change, as opposed to merely engaging the extremist rhetoric. By punctuating the discussion of technological potential with empirical research and analysis, academics can temper utopian zeal, allay anti-utopian fears and encourage the consideration of sociological scenarios which are informed by perspectives of social theory.

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NOTES

1. 1. See Howard Segal (1986) for a description of technological utopianism in the period between 1880-1930. The technologies depicted by technological utopians can change from one era to another. But the assumption that a society which adopts the proper technologies will be harmonious and prosperous remains constant.

2. For an interesting case study of the way an organization exploited the image of efficient administration through computerization, see Kling (1978).

3. Also referred to as the "superhypeway."

4. Amiran et al. (1992) point out that the discussions about the academic implications of electronic publishing have been overwhelmingly utopian. They characterize the utopian discourse in terms of "movie matinees of yesteryear": the Space Adventure (the electronic medium is viewed as a new kind of space--an internal final frontier), the Western (the medium is a virgin territory to be settled and resourced) and the Return to Eden (the medium returns us to a pre-textual state of immediate communication.)

5. William Clark (1992) provides a less reverent perspective on the roots of academic publishing in his essay about the (late) origination of the Doctor of Philosophy degree.

6. The New York Times' masthead slogan is "all the news that's fit to print."

7. For a very readable and revealing account about the way that newspapers shape the reports that appear as "news," see Manhoff and Schudson (1986).

8. "in the long run, indeed in the short run too, I would argue, digital technology democratizes the arts and letters, rather than the reverse. Simply by opening discourse out from a strictly verbal base, it enfranchises not only the left-handed but the right-brained of all sorts." (Lanham,1994:24)

9. See the analyses of technical problems/challenges to electronic publishing in Silverman (1990) and Crane (1990) for examples of technological utopianism.

10. The technology transfer program administrators assumed that mouse-driven interfaces would be universally preferred over command-driven interfaces, because it

is generally considered easier to click a mouse button than to type in a command phrase. They, therefore, provided only the mouse-driven

interface. For a firm which did not own any mice, and whose users were unaccustomed to GUI interfaces, the exclusively mouse-driven approach might present some obstacles to active use.

11. Reinforcement politics holds that organizations use technology so that actors with most resources gain more influence, while those with fewer resources lose subsequent influence.

12. Walsham, Symons and Waema (1988) characterize web models in these terms:

"The basic tenet of web models (Kling and Scacchi, 1982) is that a computer system is best conceptualized as an ensemble of equipment, applications and techniques with identifiable information processing capabilities. Each computing resource has costs and skill requirements which are only partially identifiable; in addition to its functional capabilities as an information processing tool it is a social object which may be highly charged with meaning. There is no specially separable 'human factor' for information systems: the development and routine operations of computer-based technologies hinge on many human judgement and actions, often influenced by political interests, structural constraints, and participants' definition of their situations.

The network of producers and consumers around the focal computing resource is termed the 'production lattice'; the interdependencies in this network form the 'web' from which the model derives its name. The production lattice is a social organization which is itself embedded in a larger matrix of social and economic relations ('macrostructure') and is dependent upon a local infrastructure. According to web models, these macrostructures and local infrastructures direct the kind of computer-based service available at each node of the production lattice, and since they evolve over time computing developments are shaped by a set of historical commitments. In short, web models view information systems as 'complex social objects constrained by their context, infrastructure and history' (Kling and Scacchi, 1982)."

13. 13. They found the greatest support for partisan political models of organizational choice governing the developmental trajectory of computerization in this case.

14. 14. Anthony Giddens has referred to this combination as 'utopian realism'. (Giddens, 1993)