The social life of information

For years pundits have predicted that information technology will obliterate everything-from supermarkets to business organizations to social life itself. But beaten down by info-glut, exasperated by computer crashes, and daunted by the dot com crash, individual users find it hard to get a fix on the true potential of the digital revolution. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid argue that the gap between digerati hype and end-user gloom is largely due to the "tunnel vision" that information-driven technologies breed. We've become so focused on where we think we *ought* to be—a place where technology empowers individuals and obliterates social organizations—that we often fail to see where we're really going. *The Social Life of Information* shows us how to look beyond our obsession with information and individuals to include the critical social networks of which these are always a part.

*Source: [Back cover](https://archive.org/details/sociallifeofinfo0000brow_n9b2/page/332/mode/1up)*