2022.Dec.07

REPORTS

Report on the 15th B‘AI Book Club
Enid Mumford “The story of socio-technical design: reflections on its successes, failures and potential” (2006)

On November 11, 2022, the 15th meeting of the B’AI Book Club, a book review session by project members of the B’AI Global Forum, was held online and the article “The story of socio-technical design: reflections on its successes, failures and potential” (2006) by Enid Mumford, was introduced. It was published shortly after her death. Therefore, it can be said that her previous studies are encapsulated in this article.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the history of socio-technical design in the implementation of computer systems, focusing on the people who espouse the theory, the organizations that practice it, and its impact in many different countries. According to her, improvements in labor practices and agreements between workers and management were more advanced in the 1960s and 1970s than in the 1980s and 1990s. This was because the industry was expanding, many firms faced labor and staffing problems, and firms feared losing their existing staffs. Meanwhile, in the 1980s and 1990s, industry was under pressure to cut costs, and lean manufacturing (a method of production in factories that thoroughly eliminates waste), downsizing, and cost cutting became even more common, with little regard for the needs of the employees. She refers to this as a choice of methods that did not produce good human results. She suggests that, in the face of consistent organizational and economic change, a socio-technical design approach could offer an alternative future scenario that “humanizes the potential impact of technology.” Concretely, referring to the concept proposed by the tech culture media “Wired,” which began to emerge in 2006, and to visionary companies (built to last), she discusses the future outlook for organizational forms and work styles under the current global capitalism continuing and becoming more powerful in the future.

After the introduction by Project Researcher Sano, the participants discussed their impressions of the article and tied it to their own research interests. First, it was examined whether the ultimate purpose of socio-technical design is to benefit corporate management or the welfare of workers, using the example of the hot-desking (free-address system) in companies. There may be various advantages and disadvantages depending on the perspectives, such as the reduction of the space required for each individual desk, the freedom from a feeling of oppression, or the possibility of bringing about new innovations by eliminating vertical divisions and promoting interaction. There was an opinion that it might be similar to an idea in the area of technology historical studies: housework has changed not simply because of specific items such as refrigerators and washing machines, and this transition should be grasped in terms of a “system” including the entire flow of work. It was also pointed out that there is a similarity regarding the introduction of AI: when the phrase “AI brings us an optimal environment” is pervasive, for whom can it be said to be “optimal?”

The discussion then proceeded linking the participants’ research interests to “socio-technical design,” mainly focusing on the introduction of technology in the areas of education and museums. For example, the one-way education system can develop human resources who can use AI, but in order to educate people to use AI more proactively, what are the issues to be solved? How should the stance of education and teaching staffs be updated, and how can we make children’s education more beneficial for their future lives in society? As for museums, issues include how digital exhibitions and archives will change as they increase in the future and how technology will be used not only to exhibit collections but also to store and collect items, which is an important role of a museum, and also the latest trends were shared such as the recent amendments to the Museum Law, which added the digital archiving to the museum’s main objects. In addition, the issues of handling marginalized materials and digital archiving them were also discussed, such as the problem that materials in the fields where original classification and search systems have independently been established, such as regional history and gender, are buried, because they are not comprehensibly displayed in large-scale search engines.

While there has been much technological advancement since its publication, the paper has certainly provided us with valuable opportunities to consider the “optimal” way to introduce AI technology and to discuss it in relation to each individual’s own research interest.