Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
public concern with the level of gambling in Australia, Tabcorp has consistently raised
the level of the minimum bets that can be placed by telephone bettors through a human
operator. This has been accompanied by an extension of the gambling period and a
lowering of the betting minimum for gamblers willing to use online and voice recognition
services that interface with autonomous systems. Punters have in effect been forced to
decide whether to increase the size of their minimum bets, or use a service that anecdotal
evidence suggests is widely disliked.
Vocabulary control
As discussed earlier, the installation and effective operation of an autonomous IS depends
in practice on tight vocabulary control through the use of a rigid syntax and restricted
lexicon. The effect this has is to very tightly constrain the range of possible directions
a conversation can take, and to limit the scope of what a customer can do in the course
of any interaction. This is efficient, convenient, and cost-effective.
The power implications are subtle but significant, in that the more people come to depend
on the use of ISBL-based modes of interaction, either through economic incentives or
the lure of convenience, the more accustomed they become to reduced possibilities for
questioning and negotiating with organisations. What happens, in effect, is that the
difficulties of dealing with exceptional or unusual issues become greater when the cus-
tomer has to step outside the normal mode of interaction, use a different language of
interaction, and rely on finding an organisational representative able to understand the
problem. Given the focus on efficiency that an ISBL installation represents, one of the
side effects is that the organisation itself also has a reduced capacity to talk about and
understand exceptional circumstances. It seems likely that this type of issue will become
increasingly problematic in relation to government agencies, where special cases can in
any circumstances be difficult to resolve given the opacity of many rules and regulations
(Herzfeld, 1992). A typical example is where a person seeking some form of social support
is unable to satisfy an autonomous system that she or he has the attributes required of
one of the organisation's clients, and is therefore implicitly defined as an 'outsider'. The
challenge, often a discouraging one in practice, is for the person concerned to find an-
other avenue into the organisation through which to change its perception of the situ-
ation.
A prediction such as this is not based on any assumption of cynical intent on the part
of organisations. What the ISBL perspective suggests, however, is that the very conveni-
ence and efficiency of interactions based on a simplified language used in a fully con-
trolled environment creates new possibilities for the exertion of 'bottom-line' pressures
by organisational stakeholders (Laverty, 1996). The mere existence of a streamlined
mode of operation is a threat to customers or clients who need a larger vocabulary than
the one available with which to state or negotiate their requirements. It is also conceivable
that some loss of in-depth organisational knowledge will occur. Once the 'understanding'
of an interaction is totally devolved to an autonomous IS, the temptation is to adopt the
system's interpretation of what can and cannot be done as defining the limits of possib-
ility (Herzfeld, 1992).
The scope of the ISBL
The temptation to widen the use of the ISBL through the further standardisation of IS
structures and definitions is great. The efficiency benefits that have effectively fuelled
IS developments since the 1950s have derived directly from processes of routinisation
and standardisation, and further benefits are clearly to be gained by extending these
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