People and Information

336 Pages·1970·3.763 MB·English

by  Harold B. Pepinsky (Eds.)

PEOPLE AND INFORMATION
Harold B. Pepinsky, Editor
Professor of Psychology
and of
Computer and Information Science
The Ohio State University
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08 015624 X
Contributors
ELDRIDGE ADAMS, Research Scientist, School of Law,
University of California, Los Angeles, California.
RONALD L. ERNST, Associate Professor of Computer and
Information Science, and Psychology, The Ohio State
University, Columbus, Ohio.
GEORGE R. KLARE, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, and
Professor of Psychology, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.
HAROLD B. PEPINSKY, Professor of Psychology and of
Computer and Information Science, The Ohio State Uni-
versity, Columbus, Ohio.
MELVIN POLLNER, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Univer-
sity of California, Los Angeles, California.
JAMES A. ROBINSON, Vice-President for Academic Affairs
and Provost, and Mershon Professor of Political Science,
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
THEODORE VAN FOSSEN, Organic Designer, Champion,
Pennsylvania.
ARNE WALLE, Research Associate, Administrative Research
Foundation, Bergen, Norway.
KARL E. WEICK, Director, Laboratory for Research in Social
Relations, and Professor of Psychology, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
MARSHALL C. YOVITS, Director, Computer and Informa-
tion Science Research Center; Chairman and Professor,
Department of Computer and Information Science; Profes-
sor of Electrical Engineering, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, Ohio.
DON H. ZIMMERMAN, Assistant Professor of Sociology,
University of California, Santa Barbara, California.
Preface
IN HIS REMARKABLE essay on Marshall McLuhan, Tom
Wolfe says that the professor rendered a great service to the IBM
Corporation a few years ago, when he casually pointed out that
although IBM had been avowedly marketing office equipment,
1
its actual product was information.
Be that as it may, within highly industrialized, technologically
"developed" nations information is now regarded as an important,
marketable commodity. Under scientific, professional, and man-
agerial auspices the commodity is processed and distributed,
activities that occupy persons and "things" in large numbers.
Information technology itself is big business; the information
sciences, though but recently identified as such, have become a
major discipline. Human involvement in producing, exchang-
ing, and using information, however, is reported to have puzzling
—even troublesome—consequences.
Much concern has been voiced about the information-
processing capabilities that man has created. But there is con-
siderable disagreement over the proper focus of concern. One
extreme position taken is that humans are at fault because of their
inadequate response to scientific and technological developments
of this sort. Man's technology, one infers, is more perfectible
than man himself. A strongly opposing position is taken by those
who point to such developments as the root of present-day human
ills. Whereas the products of human science and technology
ought to serve man, if indeed they are to be tolerated, these crea-
tions bid fair to dominate and supersede him. At best, according
to this view, information-processing and other technologies
have revealed themselves to be singularly maladaptive to human
requirements. The contributors to People and Information have
not taken a collective stand on this kind of issue. Rather, each
author has assumed that there are prior questions to be asked
about human involvement in the processing of information.
ix
χ PEOPLE AND INFORMATION
Attention centers upon states-of-affairs that exist now, are likely
to occur in the future, or—through strategic intervention—could
be made to occur alternatively. As editor of the volume, I did
request each contributor to deal with an aspect of information-
processing in which humans are saliently involved, expressing the
hope that everyone would treat his area of discourse more as
problematic than matter-of-fact. Apart from these admonitions,
I tried to avoid prescribing what particular messages should be.
And, despite the fact that nearly all of the authors were able to
meet together on two occasions in preparing chapter drafts (see
below), the concept of "information" has not been accorded
unitary definition in the book. The matter was discussed, but
consensus was not pushed for. Definitions are provided, notably in
Yovits and Ernst's chapter, and these are helpfully clarifying.
Yet the "state of the art," in contemporary scientific writing
about information, does not allow for encompassing definition
at this time. That in itself may be construed to be a problem.
While subject-matter topic and content vary considerably
from chapter to chapter, the area of coverage in the book has
been restricted by design: to include information-processing
under scientific, professional, and managerial auspices. That is
where (as stated initially) information is seen to be conspicuously
processed and distributed in "developed" nations. Inevitably, the
restriction upon subject-matter area and latitude of coverage
allowed within it have made for sins of omission in the range of
things that might have been discussed here. In the United States
of America or any other NATO country alone, for instance, there
is an impelling challenge to study information-processing situa-
tions in which self-proclaimed "non-establishment" groups of
persons are involved, and to make cross-national comparisons of
these circumstances. But the authors of People and Information
had their hands full in attempting to cover what they did. And a
great deal remains to be discovered about "establishment"
practices in any case.
For the scientists and technologists, professional persons,
managers, and intelligently concerned lay audiences to whom this
volume is addressed, let me briefly describe it now. As stated
above, each author has assumed important questions to be
asked—including answers to be questioned, if you will—about
human involvement in the production of information as a
marketable commodity. People and Information is designed
to provide its own kind of "background research" in the search
PREFACE
xi
2
for and application of knowledge about this important resource.
The book is divided into three major sections, the first of
which I have labelled "General: Methodological and Expository."
In the opening chapter Marshall Yovits and Ronald Ernst intro-
duce and elaborate upon a model information system with gen-
eral applications. The model is stated to have heuristic potential
for studying information flow under widely varying conditions.
A key component of the model is the decision-maker, for whom
information is data that are useful in making decisions. Ceteris
paribus, illustratively, the functioning of a battleship is thus
analogous to the running of a scientific experiment, and it be-
comes possible to approximate and correct to "good" decision-
making in either case. It is assumed, however, that this can
occur if and only if the decision-maker is attuned to what
happens in the "real world"—both prior to and after decisions
are acted upon. Don Zimmerman and Melvin Pollner's chapter,
which follows, provides an interesting contrast in its presupposi-
tion of "occasioned" and "multiple realities" to which group
activities give rise. In this sense the everyday world becomes an
important phenomenon in its own right when the grounds of
routine activities—by lay and professional persons alike—are
held to be problematic. Members' practices thus become impor-
tant resources for investigation, providing displays from which
an "objective structure" can be inferred. Such structuring activity
is interpreted to exhibit—for both members and nonmembers—
its own, self-evident, and common sense. For Zimmerman and
Pollner, then, there is no "real world" apart from the artful
practices through which a sense of reality is conveyed. One
infers that, for these authors, information is synonymous with
whatever is made available by members as "notable particulars,"
employed to substantiate members' claims to "reality" and
"truth."
Two other chapters complete this first section of the book.
Both are concerned with the problem of "information overload"
and its resolution. In the first of these, Karl Weick notes the
apparent branching of scientific disciplines into narrower and
narrower specialties, a "fact" viewed with alarm by many
writers. But, as Weick points out for us, this manifest "twigging"
phenomenon becomes a different set of problems when viewed
from the standpoint of the individual scientist. The latter, it is
seen, has his own ingenious devices for managing to avoid the
experience of information overload. George Klare's chapter
xii PEOPLE AND INFORMATION
takes a different tack. In Klare's view the manifest increase
of information overload presents enormous problems for both
the writer and the reader of scientific information. The essentials
of clear, concise, "informative" scientific writing are discussed,
along with the challenging potential of computer-assisted exposi-
tion. If Yovits and Ernst and Klare are thus helpfully prescriptive,
on the one hand, Zimmerman and Pollner and Weick are as
usefully descriptive, on the other.
The second major section of the book is devoted to problems
of information-processing that can be anticipated in particular
kinds of organizational setting. In the first of these chapters
Arne Walle describes for us a "management development culture,"
which in many respects appears to transcend national boundaries
among the industrialized nations of the Western world. The
trainer is shown to have a problem of marginal identification
with the academic and the business and industrial worlds. This
is heightened by the trainer's confrontation with problems posed
for managers, who enter special university programs where they
undergo management development training.
In a second chapter, Theodore van Fossen tells us how,
particularly in the U.SA., man is working rapidly and sense-
lessly to exhaust his natural resources. As an alternative means
of "informing what we make," organic design provides the only
native American architecture. Its principles, applied to the world
of everyday, can furnish man with a means of harnessing his
technology in the service of a more satisfying, more meaningful
life, and a husbanding of his natural resources. An existing
architectural neighborhood, designed by van Fossen, serves to
illustrate these principles, applied to the buildings in which man
lives and works.
As revealed by Eldridge Adams, courts of law provide a
situation in which men have turned to electronic data-processing
and other products of our technology. This is for the purpose of
processing efficiently enormous amounts of data. Electronic
computers, particularly, illustrate a kind of "technological magic"
that such devices are expected to afford. There may be simpler,
more effective ways of processing data, however, if men will also
use their heads wisely in attempting to become more effectively
informed. If this prescription is followed, "systems development"
methods may be employed to advantage.
The informational environment in which psychological
help-giving takes place is discussed in the last chapter of this
PREFACE xiii
section. As the author of this chapter, I begin my discussion by
describing the professional altruist in the U.S.A. as an integral
part of a "technosociety." In this context the goals and means of
help-giving are undergoing rapid change in the face of enormous
problems to be solved. And so the psychological help-giver has
formed symbiotic attachments with expert witnesses (e.g.,
scientists and technologists). Although both parties stand to
gain from their alliance, each is understood to be highly ambiva-
lent toward it. This is less manifest than in the case of help-giver
and client, however, because the altruist and his expert witness
are more able to avoid their ambivalence by recourse to aseptic
"scientific talk." Implications for information exchange are
examined.
The final section of this book is also its concluding chapter.
In an epilogue, James Robinson critically examines what has
gone before and then provides his own context for it. The exten-
sive latter portion of his chapter thus describes increasingly
important relationships between information-processing, on the
one hand, and political thought and action, on the other. From
a historical perspective he thoughtfully reviews and discusses
3
the development of these relationships.
The production of People and Information has been a col-
laborative exercise. Eldridge Adams, Harold Garfinkel, George
Klare, Harold Pepinsky, Arne Walle, Karl Weick, Theodore van
Fossen, Marshall Yovits, and Don Zimmerman met for one
day in 1967 to discuss chapter prospectuses and the kind of book
this would entail. Late in that year these persons were joined by
James Robinson and Melvin Pollner in a two-day session, at
which chapter drafts—read and digested beforehand by all
participants—could be critically reviewed. The latter session was
tape-recorded, by means of which each author could be provided
with a verbatim statement of critical comment on his chapter.
This was supplemented by preliminary editorial suggestions.
The processing of each chapter thereafter entailed considerable
revision, re-editing, and final review by the author.
Grateful acknowledgment to all of the above-named persons
for their generous and helpful participation is clearly indicated.
From each of them I learned a great deal about people and
information. Karl Weick deserves special thanks for providing
needed inspiration, wisdom, encouragement, and hard work at
every phase of manuscript preparation. James Robinson was
prevailed upon to set aside a heavy burden of competing
xiv PEOPLE AND INFORMATION
demands to write an epilogue for the book. His counsel and
support, never intruded but always available, have also been
appreciated.
Mrs. Alice Egge merits special acknowledgment for the
competence with which she helped to organize and manage our
book-writing tasks. Her secretarial services were also invaluable,
a capacity in which she was ably joined by Mrs. Louise Scott.
As Director of The Ohio State University's Behavioral Sciences
Laboratory through June 1967, J. Eugene Haas made available a
splendid working environment and excellent facilities; his suc-
cessor, Philip Burgess, has been equally hospitable. At the same
time Professor Burgess and other colleagues, notably Melvin
Gary, reviewed and discussed earlier chapter drafts with me.
Their editorial comment proved to be very helpful.
Work on the book was made possible through Grant
GN-542 from the National Science Foundation's Office of
Scientific Information Services. The initial, helpful guidance of
Jerry Kidd and John Scopino, from that office, is most gratefully
acknowledged. Under this grant, to study "The Scientist and
Technologist in Their Informational Environments," my assoc-
iates conducted a number of relevant laboratory experiments
during the grant period, October 1966-September 1968. The
planning and editing of People and Information were enormous-
ly stimulated through seminar discussions which we held in the
course of these projects. Ned Cost, Melvin Gary, Russell Jackson,
Patricia Macnamara, Nancy Rains, Larry Reavis, and Robert
Sprafkin, in particular, have been challenging colleagues and
teachers along the way.
In addition, The Ohio State University has established a
Department of and Research Center for Computer and Informa-
tion Science, under direction of Marshall Yovits. This Center is
supported largely by Grant GN-534, also from the National
Science Foundation's Office of Scientific Information Services.
Most immediately, my relationship with the Center has permitted
me to solicit from Professors Yovits and Ernst their substantive
contribution to this volume. In many ways, the relationship
has stimulated my zest to know more about the information
sciences and to add to such knowledge. By virtue of the questions
it poses, People and Information may serve to develop a sense
of common problem, at this university and elsewhere, among
persons from varied disciplines.
PREFACE xv
Information is an important commodity, and we must learn
to generate and use it wisely. In his essay, Tom Wolfe claims
that Marshall McLuhan, aided and abetted by shrewd public
relations men, has impelled key persons in his large audience to
ask, "What if he is right?" So they attend to what McLuhan
says. Wolfe also admonishes us that if we have a burning message
to deliver, we should be careful to evidence optimism—minimally
4
neutrality—about a future course of events. In the main, and
without instruction in the matter, the authors of People and
Information seem to have hewed to that line. As editor, I have
been concerned with offering a challenge more than with voicing
a threat. What follows, however, stands for itself.
Harold B. Pepinsky
Worthington, Ohio