To be sure, if the technology were totally
“disambiguated”, univocal in producing
its effects and impacts, hosting
would consist of straightforward adaptation
and alignment.
The latter is precisely
the picture of the world of implementation
as portrayed by structured information
systems methodologies: systems
are objects, knowledge is data, work is
business process, and people are emotionless
decision makers who have to align their preferences and adjust to the
changes rationally planned for them.
It is the “de-worlded” world of business reengineering
models, where designers, consultants and managers juggle around boxes and arrows to come up with solutions that optimize pre-selected performance
criteria. The intricacies and uncertainties of hospitality, hostility and ambiguity
are ruled out from such a de-worlded world of abstract organizations, but
equally ruled out is the “organizingness” of everyday life as experienced by the
members of the organization.
It is precisely such “organizingness” that helps
technology become integrated in the
workflow, “aligned” and “understood.”
Unfortunately “organizingness” cannot
be represented geometrically: it is made
by real world participants from absorbed
coping, care, being there amidst ambiguity,
intimacy, sporting hospitality as well
as tamed hostility towards what the new
and the unknown is disclosing.
Claudio Ciborra
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