Browse Books

Reviewer: Brad D. Reid

“The goal of this book is to change the way people look at technology in their own setting,” and the authors use the ecology metaphor to achieve this goal. An information ecology is “a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment.” To be involved in a local information ecology, one should “work from core values,” “pay attention,” and “ask strategic, open-ended questions about use.” The authors provide a set of strategic questions in the most useful pages of the book. The remainder of the book details a series of case studies or examples including librarians, schoolchildren, and “gardeners,” defined by the authors as “people who can translate concepts and mechanisms back and forth between the domain of the work and the technology itself.” A case study of “dysfunctional ecology” addresses privacy issues at a teaching hospital. The book concludes with a discussion of diversity on the Internet and the threat posed by focusing the Internet on “consumption and commerce.” It contains footnotes and an index. It is a unique, almost meditative, contribution to the literature of the human face of technology. Thoughtful social analysts will enjoy it.