Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
(Dos Santos and Peffers, 1995), have been assigned responsibilities for making decisions
and taking actions on the basis of information given, received and interpreted in social
interactions. While the activities in which they engage are repetitive and mundane, it
is the principle involved that is of interest in this paper; there is nothing intrinsic that
limits their sphere of operations. If meaningful interactions occur, it seems to follow that
such systems must be ascribed a form of social intelligence.
Interactions with autonomous systems take the form of conversations in which progress
is achieved through the turn-taking exchange of information, and the proposal in this
paper is that such systems and their interlocutors can be conceptualised as speaking a
language, the ISBL. While the language is very much in its formative stages, and vari-
ations in definitions and usages are still common, there is enormous pressure for stand-
ardisation of the terms used. An easily accessible example of this process in action is
provided by the progressive routinisation of autonomous payment systems, enabling
organisations to use common interfaces and standard payment 'scripts'.
It is perhaps the fact that their operations are mundane that has limited the amount of
theoretical interest in autonomous IS. Strategic analysts have not overlooked their
competitive significance (Dos Santos and Peffers, 1995), but the systems themselves are
generally not particularly complex, and have therefore been of little technical concern.
The argument in this paper is, however, that they represent a social development of
great potential significance, and that their emerging capacity to 'speak' a common lan-
guage heralds the realisation of some of that potential.
The development of the ISBL is being fuelled in practice by a range of IS integration
initiatives based on enterprise system (ERP) packages, electronic data interchange (EDI),
government data-sharing, and business-to-business (B2B) procurement exchanges, all
of which rely for their effectiveness on the implementation of standardised IS constructs
including data and process definitions. It is these constructs, rather than the perceived
interfaces, that enable systems to 'talk' both to people and to other systems. The new
language is evolving at an electronic frontier where people and systems are learning
how to converse meaningfully with each other, making it a kind of pidgin language
(Holm, 2000; Czarniawska, 2003). Pidgin languages are compromise languages that use
a restricted lexicon and a rigid syntax to facilitate trade between different cultural groups
(Holm, 2000). Continuing development of the ISBL involves a compromise between
English usage and the rigid prescriptions of computer systems; while English is the
source for much of the terminology, definitional relations are to formal constructs and
not to the flexible concepts referenced by natural language.
The general justification for the proposal in this paper resides in the explanatory power
of the linguistic perspective. The ISBL concept facilitates the understanding and analysis
of a range of IS-related phenomena, particularly organisational issues arising from systems
integration initiatives. Several of these relate to social power, and the possibilities for
autonomous systems to be used to entrench and extend existing power differentials af-
fecting consumers, and organisations in dependent positions within major supply chains.
These aspects are discussed in detail later in the paper.
Language and power
Following the work of theorists including Mead (1962), Goffman (1981), Foucault (1972)
and Bourdieu (1991), it has come to be accepted that language plays a number of crucial
roles in the establishment and maintenance of social relations. The types of mechanisms
involved include the capacity to define a particular language as standard, to vocalise in
a certain way, to control the vocabulary in use, and to control turn-taking and the dir-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search