Technological and Social Access
To Computing, Information and Communication Technologies
White Paper for
Presidential Advisory Committee on
High-Performance Computing
and Communications, Information Technology,
and the Next Generation Internet.
http//www.ccic.gov/ac/whitepapers.html
Rob Kling
Center for Social Informatics
SLIS, Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
kling@indiana.edu
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/klingRevised July 1998
KEY ISSUESThe Internet is a wonderful extension of the nation's (and world's) communications infrastructure -- widely used in education, journalism, and research, as well as for commerce and entertainment. The first generation of the Internet supported varied uses, but its popularity was fueled by e-mail. The WWW supported a new array of documentary and pictorial communications -- as well as a continuing stream of innovations in applications such as electronic publishing, digital libraries, and electronic commerce. The Next Generation Internet (NGI) will be designed, in part, to facilitate real-time video communication, and will lead to a new array of applications in areas such as health care, education, scientific research, emergency services, and entertainment.
These new applications could have profound effects upon professional practices and values in various fields as illustrated through vivid vignettes in NGI planning documents. A significant fraction of these envisioned applications use the NGI for enriched video-conferencing between professionals or between professionals and their clients. Some of these applications also hinge on the abilities of system developers and professionals to integrate data from diverse sources -- such as bringing medical records together from different clinics and jurisdictions.
1. The opportunities of the NGI that people envision could be lost if the primary complexities are seen as technological, and if policy makers underestimate the ways in which social factors influence the adoption, uses and usability of advanced information technologies. Because these applications highlight new possibilities enabled by the NGI, it might appear that technological access is the primary roadblock. Technological access refers to the physical availability of suitable equipment, including computers of adequate speed and equipped with appropriate software for a given activity . There is an important, but partial truth to this observation, since today's Internet is incapable of effectively supporting any of the numerous intriguing vignettes of NGI applications that appear in the NGI Concept Paper, congressional testimony, and white papers.
2. Social access refers to know-how, a mix of professional knowledge economic resources, and technical skills, to use technologies in ways that enhance professional practices and social life. In practice, social access -- the abilities of diverse organizations and people from many walks of life to actually use these services -- will be critical if they are to move from the laboratories and pilot projects into widespread use where they can vitalize the nation and the economy.
This paper examines some of the challenges in the deployment and use of broadband computing, information technologies (IT) in the workplace, the schools and the home, with specific attention to improvements in the Nation's network infrastructure that would ease access and usability for the average citizen.
WHAT WE KNOW TODAY
1. The Value of the Internet as a Communication Medium
There are innumerable examples of the use and value of the Internet in providing new kinds of communications to support a cornucopia of human activities in virtually every profession and kind of institution. The professional and middle classes have found the Internet to be useful for communication with some government agencies, for some forms of shopping, for tacking investments, maintaining ties with friends and family via email, and as a source of entertainment.2. The Changing Demographics of Internet Users.
The total number of people who have access to the Internet appears to have been doubling every two years since the early 1990s. At any given time, the estimates can vary by a fact of two or more, depending upon the stringency of the criteria that characterize Internet access or Internet use (ie., having an account for receiving or sending e-mail, having WWW access, having used the account within the last N months.)(Hoffman, Kalsbeek, and Novak, 1996). By even stringent criteria, the number of Internet users is continuing to rise rapidly.Individuals' demographic characteristics, such as their education, income, and locations, are highly correlated with their use of the Internet. While families with college graduates were twice as likely as those of high school graduates to use network services in 1993, these disparities decreased since he late 1980s (Anderson, et. al. 1995: 24-29). Some studies find that the average and median incomes of Internet users are declining towards "mainstream levels" (GVU, 1997). However, there is evidence that averages mask important differences, and that the disparity in computer network use is actually growing between poor and wealthy households (Anderson, et. al.,1995: 24-29).
One reason that lower income families use the Internet less -- aside from costs -- is because of various "externalities" such as users needing technical support and access to a community of other online users. Unlike television and Nintendo, e-mail is useful primarily if one's friends or family also has access (see Boltier, 1998). A recent study found that the Internet is a social medium for many ordinary people:
electronic mail use was more popular than use of the Web, more stable, and drove continued use of the Internet overall. One reason is that Email sustains ongoing dialogues and relationships. In contrast, the Web has more bounded properties, in which information gathering, for example, for school assignments, purchase decisions, or paid employment is satisfied with one or a few visits. .... the Internet is a social and emotional technology, and that it sustains social networks (Kiesler, Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, and Scherlis. 1997).
There is some data about the extent to which schools are connected to the Internet. In February 1998,the National Center for Education Statistics reported that 78% of the U.S. schools had Internet access, twice that of 1994. However, the distribution of online resources in uneven. 63% of schools with a high percentage of poor students offered Internet access. 84% of schools in the suburban areas had Internet access, while 74% of schools in the urban schools had Internet access. It is common for urban high schools to have 1500-2500 students. A large school with a lab of six PCs connected to the Internet is counted as connected as a small school which has six Internet connected PCs in every classroom. . The meaning of numbers like these comes primarily from anecdotal evidence, and we know very little about the actual use of the Internet in schools.
3. Supporting Social Access to Computers and Networks.
There is an important body of research about the actual practices of managers and professionals in using computer technologies in various settings, from research laboratories to consulting firms, from insurance companies to manufacturing firms. Of course, none of these studies examines professionals using NGI-enhanced applications! Some of the more recent studies examine how people use the Internet and related network information services. This body of research, called Social Informatics, has produced some useful ideas and findings that are applicable to many kinds of information technologies and shed interesting light on NGI developments. The concept of "computing packages" is one such idea that is central to our analysis.A. Computing Packages
Information and communication technologies are often discussed as tools or simple appliances, even when they refer to complex arrangements of varied equipment, organizational practices as in the WWW or airline reservation systems. In practice, it is more helpful to view specific information technologies as a "socio-technical package" that encompasses a complex, interdependent system comprised of people (computer specialists, managers), hardware (computer mainframes, workstations, peripherals, telecommunications equipment), software (operating systems, utilities and application programs), techniques (management science models, procedures, training/support/help), and data. Computing and communications technologies are increasingly intertwined in the everyday functioning of other systems at all levels of organizations and society. This package view has substantial repercussions for understanding how information technologies influence social change.Two organizations that acquire the same set of equipment usually develop different socio-technical "IT packages." A simple contrast between a typical university library and a typical elementary school that each acquire 20 PCs, a server, and a high-speed laser printer to support Internet access helps illustrate the concept. The university library is likely to have a skilled technical staff (that supports other library systems) to install and maintain the equipment. There are likely to be library staff (or academic computing support staff) who are assigned and trained to answer students' questions, both about computer use and ways to effectively search the Internet. The computers are likely to be connected to a high-speed campus network, and people who wish to use them may be required to have a university network ID.
In contrast, the typical elementary school is unlikely to have its own technical support staff, and is most likely to rely upon the school district's computer specialists to upgrade and repair the PCs and printer on request. If the PCs are installed in a lab, students will typically be given access for a class period or after-school. [A network ID is unlikely to be required, and visiting parents and short-term school aides may be able to log in on their own.] If the 20 PCS are distributed into 10 classrooms, teachers are more likely to integrate their use into class topics. But the typical elementary teacher still has limited computer and Internet searching skills. In general, technical support is less available at the elementary school, and, as a result, they have more equipment out-of-service for longer periods of time, and software upgrades are less frequent.
The organization of instructors' time also differs in the typical university and elementary school. The typical university instructor is in class from 6-12 hours per week, while the typical elementary school teacher is in class about 7 hours per day. While university instructors usually have other service and research obligations, they also have much more time to prepare each week's classes and to develop new inquiry oriented activities for their students.
If we add the offices of a mutual funds investments analysts to this contrast, the "same equipment" and network access would be organized in still different ways. While students would be expected to share computers, and would expect to wait in line, each analyst would have his own PC. There are often technical staff who anticipate problems and opportunities, by organizing preventive maintenance and upgrading the PC and network infrastructure without always being asked. There would be more sustained and reliable access to financial and news databases and the WWW sites that help them track the affairs of selected firms and the fortunes of specific industries. Financial analysts develop significant expertise in knowing the data sources that they use routinely; in addition there may be special librarians who organize business and financial reports and who keep abreast of new financial information sources. The computing and networking support in high performance organizations, such as urban medical clinics, increasingly resembles that of the mutual fund investment firm rather than the university student computer labs.
No one expects an elementary school to be organized like a university, or either of them to be organized like a mutual fund investment company or a medical clinic. But researchers have found that the character of the organization profoundly shapes the character of the kinds of computing services that the "similar equipment" provides. Some of the differences are visible in the ways that computers and network services are organized.
B. Infrastructure for Computing Support is Social as Well as Technological
PCs are much more complicated to install and use for a diverse array of tasks than are "turnkey appliances" such as televisions and VCRs. While it is a standing joke that most people don't know how to program their VCRs (and thus watch an LCD blinking 00:00), most people can reliably play a videotape and enjoy the resulting entertainment. In contrast, PCS that use networked require much more complex configurations (including data rates and IP numbers) that can change with changes in network configurations and service providers.The NGI projects focus on one critical kind of technological infrastructure -- high speed computer networking. It is also understood that effective computer systems that use NGI services will require reliable complementary technological resources -- such as printers, electricity (reliable in urban settings, sometimes problematic after disasters and in remote regions). What is less well appreciated is how the infrastructure for making computer systems workable also includes a variety of resources that are social in character. Skilled technical installers, trainers and consultants are the most obvious social resources. However, group-scale systems, such as those used in medical clinics, schools and research laboratories, also depend upon technical managers to orchestrate system maintenance, configurations for new users, and security procedures as well as upon people to document local configurations. In addition, people who use advanced networking applications need knowhow -- to be able to learn to effectively integrate them into their professional practices - based on learning from their peers or advanced professionals.
System infrastructure is a socio-technical system since technical capabilities depend upon skilled people, administrative procedures, etc.; and social capabilities are enabled by simpler supporting technologies (i.e., word processors for creating technical documents, cellular telephones and pagers for contacting rapid-response consultants) (Kling, 1992)..
Malfunctioning computer systems are not simply an opportunity loss, such as a book that is bought but not read. When people organize their days about the expectations that key technologies will work well -- and they don't -- they often spend considerable time tinkering to get systems to work, waiting for help to come, and so on. In the classroom, the teacher who spends 20 minutes tinkering with a malfunctioning computer has also spent 1/3 of a class period unavailable to the students.
C. Workable computer systems are usually supported by a strong socio-technical infrastructure.
Much of the research about appropriate infrastructure comes from studies of systems that underperformed or failed. The social infrastructure for a given computer system is not homogeneous across social sites. For example, the Worm Community System was a collaboratory for molecular biologists who worked in hundreds of university laboratories; key social infrastructure for network connectivity and (UNIX) skills depended upon the laboratory's work organization (and local university resources). Researchers found that the Worm Community System was technically well conceived; but it was rather weak as an effective collaboratory because of the uneven and often limited support for its technical requirements in various university labs. In short, lack of attention to local socio-technical infrastructure can undermine the workability of larger scale projects.D. The Routine Use of Computer Systems Often Requires rticulation Work
The concept of "articulation work" characterizes the efforts required to bring together diverse materials or to resolve breakdowns in work (such as clearing a paper jam when printing a long electronic document to read). Anomalies are common in many uses of computer systems and professionals often developed informal (and sometimes strange) workarounds to compensate for recurrent difficulties. More articulation work is required when people use higher performance and new technologies in a setting where older technologies dominate. It takes some time for products to be refined, organizations to learn new procedures, and so on. Today, people who install ISDN modems and associated software face more articulation work than do people who install conventional modems. As NGI applications are tried out, we would expect that "leading edge users" will also face more articulation work than will their peers who use more conventional early 21st Century information technologies.Articulation work is often invisible to people who are not close to the place and moment of working. Articulation work can require notable ingenuity, but that higher status professionals (and managers) who are buffered from the details of computer work, tend to trivialize the nature of the work to be done. Articulation work is so pervasive that (humanly) effective system designers have to routinely examine how new systems reduce, increase, or reorganize articulation work.
4. Supporting Access to the Internet for Ordinary People
Although 50% of US households may have computers by the year 2000, organizations have been the major sites for adopting networked information systems, especially as implementers of advanced technologies. There are few studies of computer use in households. In one careful study of "ordinary households" (HomeNet), researchers found that using the Internet is too hard for many "ordinary people (Kiesler, Kraut, Mukhopadhyay, and Scherlis. 1997)":Over 70% of the households called the help desk. Calls to the help desk represented the behavior of some of the more sophisticated users. Less sophisticated users dropped out once they hit usability barriers. The kinds of problems logged by help desk staff included problems in installing phone service, configuring the telecommunication software, busy signals (users often blamed themselves!), buggy software, inexperience with mice, keyboards, scroll bars, terminology, radio buttons, and menus. Yet, in our home interviews, we noted there were many more problems participants had not called about.
.. we thought that as everyone learned how to use the computer and what the Internet could do for them, the influence of their initial computer skill would decline with time. We were wrong. Even after a year of experience with the Internet, participant's initial computer skill still constrained their Internet usage. This result held across different gender and age groups.
Many ordinary people access computers and the Internet through community centers and public libraries. Mark, Cornebise, and Wahl (1997) examined community technology centers and report that:
.... community technology centers provide computer access to a majority of people who do not have technology access elsewhere. And, for individuals who have technology access at libraries, homes or elsewhere, community technology centers provide them with additional technology applications, such as the Internet or scanners, that they do not have access to at other locations. ...... The informal, learner-centered atmosphere that encourages exploration also was cited as a reason for preferring a community technology center to other locations.Community centers can often provide skilled assistance that increases social access to network services. Industry surveys of the 'total costs of ownership" (TCO) of PCs in major business firms suggest that equipment costs are a small fraction of TCO. Over time, support costs - including training, maintaining equipment, upgrading, reconfiguration, and other articulation work - become major costs. The HomeNet study suggests that effectively using the Internet is a struggle for many ordinary people. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many school teachers struggle with similar difficulties when they do not have ready access to computer consultants in their schools. Community centers may play an important role in making more complex NGI-based services effectively available to many ordinary people.WHAT NEEDS TO BE EXPLORED
1. We do not have a good understanding of the ways that social access to the Internet is effectively supported for ordinary people at home and in public service agencies, such as schools and libraries. This is a topic that merits significant inquiry, since a large body of research points to its importance.
2. It is important to better understand what specific kinds of networked services will actually be of value to ordinary people. For example, it easy to extrapolate from the importance of e-mail to assume that many people will value video-conferencing with their doctors, friends, and family. However, the video-phone was not widely adopted (for several reasons). People's preference for visual privacy at home was a major consideration (Austen, 1998). Even in offices, many people who have videophones or desktop videoconferencing mask their cameras or make notable and time consuming cosmetic adjustments to their clothes and desktops before answering video calls (Austen, 1998). It is important to understand the underlying social judgements that people make in using networked services - at home, in public facilities, and at work.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
The NGI promises to be a profound advance in the nations' telecommunications infrastructure. The high bandwidth capabilities of the NGI can support promising applications for managers, professionals and their clients. While the NGI is a critical enabling technology, it will have to be shaped as part of larger socio-technical computing systems for these applications to yield the anticipated social benefits. Social access to the NGI will be as crucial as technological access. This will require assessments of the overall computing packages that are used and experienced by people at home, in schools, work and other places.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. This early stage of planning is a critical time to undertake research into the social aspects of information and communication technologies that will help them work for ordinary people in varied social settings outside of the laboratory and specially-supported pilot projects.
2. One straightforward way to fund this research is to devote 1%-2% of the NGI's research budget on social research that will identify ways to improve its value for ordinary citizens, as well as for service agencies such as schools and libraries. (The Human Genome Project, for example, devoted 1% of its budget to social and ethical investigations.)
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
Anderson, Robet H. Tora K. Bikson, Sally Ann Law, and Bridger M. Mitchell. 1995. Universal Access to E-mail: Feasibility and Societal Implications, RAND, MR-650-MF, 267 pp. At http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR650/
Austen, Ian. 1998. "Videophones Evolve, Slowly: A Perennial Dream of Futurists has Arrived, but a Revolution in Telecommunications has Not." New York Times (Thursday, July 16): D1, D7
Bowker, Geoffrey; Susan Leigh Star; William Turner and Les Gasser, (Eds). 1997. Social Science, Technical Systems and Cooperative Work: Beyond the Great Divide. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Bollier, David. 1998. Social Venture Capital for Universal Electronic Communications - A Conference Report, April 24-25, 1997 - The Aspen Institute Washington, D.C. ISBN: 0-89-843-227-8 . - http://www.iaginteractive.com/emfa/venture.htm
Ciborra, Claudio (ed). 1996. Groupware and Teamwork: Invisible Aid or Technical Hindrance? New York: John Wiley.
GVU. 1997. GVU's WWW User Surveys. GVU Homepage [online]. Available from World Wide Web: <http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/>
Hoffman, Donna L. , William D. Kalsbeek, and Thomas P. Novak. 1996. "Internet and Web Use in the United States: Baselines for Commercial Development." Project 2000 Working Paper, Owen Graduate School, Vanderbilt University. July.
Kahin, Brian and James Keller (eds). 1995. Public Access to the Internet. Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press.
Kiesler, Sara (Ed.) 1997. The Culture of the Internet. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Kiesler, Sara, Robert Kraut, Tridas Mukhopadhyay, William Scherlis. 1997. Homenet Overview: Recent Results from a Field Trial of Residential Internet Use, Carnegie Mellon University. Pittsburgh, PA 15213 at http://homenet.andrew.cmu.edu/progress/ovrview8697.html
Kling, Rob. 1992. "Behind the Terminal: The Critical Role of Computing Infrastructure In Effective Information Systems' Development and Use." Chapter 10 in Challenges and Strategies for Research in Systems Development. edited by William Cotterman and James Senn. Pp. 153-201. New York: John Wiley.
Kling, Rob and Tom Jewett. 1994. "The Social Design of Worklife With Computers and Networks: An Open Natural Systems Perspective." in Advances in Computers. Rob Kling and Tom Jewett (ed.) vol. 39:
Kling, Rob and Leigh Star. 1997. "Human Centered Systems in the Perspective of Organizational and Social Informatics" Chapter 5 of Human Centered Systems. Report of an NSF Workshop on Human-centered Systems: Information, Interactivity, And Intelligence (HCS) February 17-19, 1997. Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel, Arlington, VA Thomas Huang and James Flanigan (Editors). http://www.ifp.uiuc.edu/nsfhcs/
Mark, June, Janet Cornebise, and Ellen Wahl. 1997. Community Technology Centers: Impact on Individual Participants and Their Communities. (April) Education Development Center, Inc. Newton, MA. http://www.ctcnet.org/eval.html
Social Informatics Home Page. 1997. http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:
Rob Kling
Professor of Information Science and Information Systems
Director, Center for Social Informatics
Indiana University - Bloomington
(http://www.slis.indiana.edu/kling)Rob Kling grew up in Northern New Jersey. He completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia University (1965) and his graduate studies, specializing in Artificial Intelligence, at Stanford University (1967, 1971). Between 1966 and 1971 he held a research appointment in the Artificial Intelligence Center at the Stanford Research Institute. He held his first professorship in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison between 1970-1973. He was on the faculty of UC-Irvine from 1973-1996 and held professorial appointments at UCI's Center for Research on Information Technology and Organizations and Graduate School of Management.
In August 1996, he moved to Indiana University - Bloomington as Professor of Information Science and Information Systems. He directs a new interdisciplinary research center at IU, the Center for Social Informatics (http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI) and also directs a new Master of Information Science degree program.
Since the early 1970s he has studied the social opportunities and dilemmas of computerization for managers, professionals, workers, and the public. Dr. Kling examines computerization as a social process with technical elements. He has studied how intensive computerization transforms work and how computerization entails many social choices. He has also studied the ways that complex information systems and expert systems are integrated into the social life of organizations. He has conducted studies in numerous kinds of organizations, including local governments, insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms, and hi-tech manufacturing firms. He has written about the value conflicts implicit in and social consequences of computerization which directly effects the public. He is currently studying the effective use of electronic media to support scholarly and professional communication.
Dr. Kling is co-author of Computers and Politics: High Technology in American Local Governments (Columbia University Press, 1982) which examined how computerization reinforces the power of already powerful groups. He is co-editor of PostSuburban California: The Transformation of Postwar Orange County (University of California Press, 1990) examines the way that Orange County California is organized in a new social form beyond the traditional city and suburb, one that is spatially decentralized, functionally specialized, and mixes a rich array of residences, commerce, industry, services, government and the arts. PostSuburban California won the Thomas Athearn Award from the Western Historical Society in 1992 and was reissued in paperback in 1995. Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts & Social Choices (Academic Press, 1991) examines the social controversies about computerization in organizations and social life, regarding productivity, worklife, personal privacy, risks of computer systems, and computer ethics. (Dr. Kling is the sole editor of a substantially rewritten 2nd edition of Computerization and Controversy -- 1996. (See http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/cc/index.html)
In addition, his research has been published in over 85 journal articles and book chapters. He has presented numerous conference papers, given invited lectures at many major universities and the National Academy of Sciences, and given keynote and plenary talks at conferences in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. He has consulted for private firms, non-profit organizations, the Congress of the United States, and two foreign governments about the opportunities and problems of computerization. His current service includes membership on the Executive Committee of the US ACM Committee for Computers and Public Policy and on the American Sociological Association's Committee on Electronic publishing.
Dr. Kling has been co-director of UCI's doctoral concentration on Computing, Organizations, Policy and Society. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Information Society (http://www-slis.indiana.edu/TIS) and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of several other scholarly and professional journals including, European Journal of CSCW, Information Technology and People, Social Science Computer Review, and Accounting, Management and Information Technology. He has also organized special workshops about the social and managerial aspects of computerization, served on the program committees of several major national conferences, and was Chair of an (IFIP) international working group on the Social Accountability of Computing. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the ACM's US Committee on Public Policy (USACM) and on the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists (joint AAAS-ABA).
Dr. Kling has been a visiting Professor at the Copenhagen School of Business and Economics and at the Solvay School of Business at the University of Brussels. He has also been a Research Fellow at Harvard University's Program on Information Resources Policy and a Visiting Researcher at the Gessellschaft fur Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung in Bonn, Germany.
Dr. Kling's scholarly and professional accomplishments have been recognized nationally and internationally. In 1987 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Social Sciences by the Free University of Brussels. In 1983 he received a Silver Core Award from the International Federation of Information Processing Societies. In 1984 he received a Service Award from the Association for Computing Machinery.