nettime: the decline of command-and-control (fwd)

[McKenzie Wark <mwark@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au>]

Something about the language of this still seems to me a bit
troubling....
__________________________________________
"We no longer have roots, we have aerials."
http://www.mcs.mq.edu.au/~mwark
 -- McKenzie Wark 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 21:01:29 -0800 (PST)
From: Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu>
To: rre@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: the decline of command-and-control computing


The Decline of Command-and-Control Computing

Phil Agre
January 1997


The methods of computer system design originally developed in the context
of command-and-control organizations, such as industrial automation and the
military, and they still largely reflect the structure of social relations
found in those organizational forms.  The command-and-control worldview can
be found on two levels, substantive and procedural.  On a substantive level,
command-and-control design proceeds through the classical methods of systems
analysis: representing the existing practices as a "system", replacing these
practices with computers to the greatest possible extent, and prescribing
fixed rules for the activities that remain unautomated.  On a procedural
level, command-and-control design occurs when users are not involved in all
phases of the design process, from the articulation of an overall vision
and strategy of computerization to the implementation and evolution of the
finished system.  

The reforms that will be necessary to produce truly "human-centered" systems
take place on two levels as well.  On a substantive level, we must get beyond
the metaphor of computing as automated information work.  In particular, we
must recognize that contemporary system design usually involves the design
of institutions as well.  The boundary between system and institution is
steadily less clear, and the spread of powerful high-level standards for
interorganizational computing, such as the CORBA standard for distributed
object systems, vastly increases the scope of the institutional implications
of system design.  A phrase such as "digital libraries" or "distance learning"
can easily produce the illusion that due attention has been paid to the
institutional dimension of design, when in fact the institutional ideas
encoded in the phrase are being read off the surface of the machinery
-- driven by a technological agenda without any real analysis, much less
conscious choice.

On a procedural level, we must break down the walls that separate designers
and users.  It is now possible to synthesize and extend a generation of
experiments with the non-command-and-control design methodologies that have
been described as participatory design, interative prototyping, requirements
engineering, concurrent engineering, visioning processes, standards strategy,
ethnography, and interaction analysis.  Each of these methodologies has its
own strengths and its own role in an emerging picture of system design.  This
picture might be called the "dialogue model" of design, whereby the skill of
system design is both procedural and technical in equal parts.  The dialogue
model is not just a political dream; in many areas, the continuing relevance
of computer science is threatened by the growth of design disciplines with
a strong grounding in specific subject areas such as medicine and business.
A true practice of human-centered systems design will require a general model
of design dialogue -- a domain-independent model for engaging in open-ended
dialogue with domain-specific expertise in the design process.

We have been developing a design practice based on the dialogue model.  The
central problem is establishing communication between the technical discipline
of computing and the discipline of the user community.  In our view, the key
to establishing communication is a simple analytical framework for mapping
the field of social relationships and practices around a proposed system.
Systems analysts, of course, have long mapped the informational relationships
in a worksite with a view to automating them.  Our strategy is to map a much
broader range of relationships and practices with a view to establishing
a shared vocabulary for reasoning about them.  In designing interactive
documents for the Web, for example, we begin by enumerating all of the
communities, relationships, activities, media, and genres that characterize
the potential users' lives.  Having done so, it becomes possible to reason
about what sorts of Web-based tools might actually be useful, in the sense
of fitting into the existing fabric of activities and the existing ecosystem
of various media and their uses.

The hardest part is bridging the gap between substantive and procedural
concerns.  Command-and-control comes equipped with a repertoire of stories
about the relationship between computational structures and forms of human
activity, and with settled ideas about the methods by which human activities
should be designed and redesigned.  It is crucial that we bring all of the
unarticulated assumptions of command-and-control computing into consciousness,
so that we can begin to imagine a practice of computing for a world without
hierarchy.


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