ITRN 754 Fall Semester, 2002 Thursdays, 4:30-7:00 p.m.  The School of Public Policy  Room 268 Arlington Campus George Mason University

Todd M. La Porte  Visiting Associate Professor  Office hours: Tuesday, 4:00-6:00 and     Thursday, 2:30-4:00; by appt.  Rm. 248, Arlington Campus  (202) 686-7115 (home) tlaporte *at* gmu.edu

Revised December 3, 2001

Course Description

New information technologies have long been associated with economic, social, and institutional changes, but prognosticators have pressed home the point to a remarkable degree in the last decade. The current upheaval over e-commerce, digital government, virtual and other "dot.com" organizations, and the like is no exception. "Internet time" appears to compress developments so tightly that it is difficult to see whether what is going on today reflects long-standing well understood processes, or a really "new new thing."

This course aims to provide some perspective by looking at the place of information and technologies in institutions. Many of the most important implications of new information technologies are not in the technologies themselves, but in how the information they process or communicate interacts with existing economic, social and political processes and structures. In particular, understanding many policy implications of new technologies requires a deeper consideration of theories and larger patterns that characterize the role of information in institutions, organizations and markets.

This course will address a number of such theoretical perspectives, especially those that emphasize the social embeddedness or social construction of technologies. Then it will take a closer look at a number of important institutions, such as libraries, universities, local communities, non-profit organizations, and government to see how they are affected by changes in information technologies, and to speculate about their futures.  Class will emphasize how the technological and organizational phenomena, often originating in the United States, will play out in non-U.S. settings.

In addition, the course will serve as a platform for some practical analytic exercise:  an important part of the course is the analysis of a particular institution from a variety of perspectives, culminating in a report suitable for presentation to the leaders of the institution itself.  By the end of the semester, it is expected that you will have a grasp of concepts that will help you make sense of and work with new information technologies in real world situations.

Course Requirements and Grading

The course will be conducted as a seminar. You are expected to:

• complete assigned readings,
• participate in in-class and electronic discussions,
• contribute to electronic discussions on topics or questions between classes,
• prepare a final paper applying the concepts raised in the class to your targetted institution, approximately 20 pages in length, suitable for presentation to institution leaders or members.

Grades will be based on the following allocation:

In-class and electronic discussion:                 33 %
Mid-term take-home exam:                          33%
Final paper:                                                33 %

Extra credit for accepted "Clips for fun":     10 %

In-class and electronic discussion

Class and electronic discussion group participation is an important part of this seminar. These discussions are intended to be highly interactive, open, and even irreverent (but always respectful!). Questions about many concepts are undoubtedly going to arise, and the class bulletin board is a good place to raise them.  WebCT can be accessed by clicking here , or by going to http://mason3.gmu.edu:8900/SCRIPT/ITRN701S00/scripts/serve_home.

Mid-term take-home exam

Midway through the course a take-home exam will be given.  Review questions will be distributed several weeks before the exam, and two or three questions will be chosen from that list.  The exam will be designed to get you to think hard about the readings, and to begin to put together the the observations that will be the core of your paper.

The mid-term take-home exam will be due at 4:30 pm on October 18.

Final paper

Students are required to submit a written paper (20 pages, double-spaced) that applies the concepts the seminar will address to an institution or organization you work in or care about, such as one where your career plans will take you.

This paper may be done in small groups or individually.  I encourage students to work together to master the material, and to generate useful ideas and insights.

The object of the paper is to analyze the role of information and information technologies in supporting the structures, procedures, practices and outcomes associated with a particular institution.  It is important that the concepts and issues raised in the class be the background and springboard for this discussion.  Carefully observing your selected institution, and simply noting how the issues of information, technologies and institutional change are manifested will be a step in the right direction.  You can think of this exercise less as a research paper, and more as an analytical travel diary, where you notice phenomena around you, but with the special lenses of the topics we are addressing in class.

If you wish, you may consider as an audience for your paper a senior official of that institution, and that your paper could be an analytic strategic planning memo.  Students will also present term paper projects in class (20 minutes) during the last two class sessions--these could be used as practice sessions for a briefing to senior management on your findings and observations.

The format of the paper can be in any consistent and logical system, of which there are many (Turabian, MLA, APA). The paper must be double-spaced on regular white paper.  Spelling, punctuation and syntax are important, and will be considered in the final evaluation. The University Writing Center can help with the mechanics of paper composition, if you have any concerns about it.  See me if you have any questions about writing, styles, etc.

The final paper will be due at 4:30 pm on December 6.

Extra credit for "Clips for fun"

Several of the sessions contain a number of "Clips for fun."  These are short newspaper or magazine articles that capture events or stories that illustrate the concepts or issues under discussion in the semester.  To encourage students to keep their eyes open for such items, and to share them with the group, I am awarding up to 10 percent extra credit for contributed items that could be included in the readings.  Not all items qualify:  they must be substantial articles or stories, and they must report on significant developments in the field.

Please note: All work must be your own. Where the work of others is used, even in paraphrased form, it must appropriately referenced, including (especially!) material taken from on-line sources.  When in doubt, cite!  Plagiarism is an Honor Code violation.  If you have any questions about proper referencing practice, read the information at:  http://www.indiana.edu/~wts/wts/plagiarism.html , or contact me.

In order to assure a level playing field for all students, I may require that papers be submitted electronically in order to facilitate source and fact checking.  For lists of "term paper mills" that share or sell term papers, see http://www.coastal.edu/library/mills2.htm . I'm sure you can do work that is much higher quality than what is purveyed here.

Readings

Some readings for the course will be available in a Coursepack at the Copy Center, and are indicated in the reading list.  The rest will be on Reserve in the Arlington Campus Library, on Electronic Reserve or on the Web.

To get readings on electronic reserve, go to the Library's e-reserve link, at http://oscr.gmu.edu/cgi-bin/ers/OSCRgen.cgi .

Scroll through the list of courses or instructors, and enter the password "changes" to get access to the readings.  You may need to download Adobe Acrobat to view some of the files.

Also, to get access to some files from off campus , you may need to use the University's proxy server.  This permits you to view files that are provided only to on on-campus users without charge.  To do this, go to http://infosparc.gmu.edu/lso/proxy.html .

The seminar readings are expanded from a syllabus for a similar course taught by Prof. Phil Agre, School of Information Science, University of California, Los Angeles.

Langdon Winner, chap. 1, "Technologies as forms of life," chap. 2, "Do artifacts have politics?" and chap. 6, "Mythinformation," in The Whale and the Reactor:  A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 3-18, 19-39, and 98-117.  Coursepack.

Rob Kling and Suzanne Iacono, "Computerization movements and the mobilization of support for computing," in Jacques Berleur, Andrew Clement, Richard Sizer, and Diane Whitehouse, eds., The Information Society: Evolving Landscapes, (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1990), pp. 62-83.  Also published as part II, chap. G, in Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, 2nd ed., (New York: Academic Press, 1996), pp. 85-105.  Coursepack.

Phil Agre, "The Wired Car in the Wired World," unpublished draft, June 24, 2001, http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/car.html .

Philip E. Agre, "Yesterday's tomorrow," Times Literary Supplement, 3 July 1998, pp. 2-3.  Draft version:  http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tls.html

Scott Shane, chap. 4, "The KGB, father of perestroika," in Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, (Chicago: Dee, 1995), pp. 99-120.  Coursepack.

John Seeley Brown, and Paul Duguid, chap. 1, "The limits to information," from The Social Life of Information, (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard Business School Press, 2003, pp. 11-33.  Excerpts are available at First Monday, issue 5, no. 4, April 2000, http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_4/brown_chapter1.html.

Recommended:

Survey of "Electronic Commerce," The Economist, 26 February 2000, http://www.economist.com/surveys/showsurvey.cfm?issue=20000226

Survey of "The New Economy," The Economist, 23 September 2000, http://www.economist.com/surveys/showsurvey.cfm?issue=20000923

John Cassidy, "The force of an idea," New Yorker, 12 January 1998, pp. 32-37.

Brian Arthur, "Increasing returns and the new world of business," Harvard Business Review, July 1996, pp. 100-109.

A. J. Bradford Long and A. Michael Froomkin, "Speculative microeconomics for tomorrow's economy," November 22, 1999, http://personal.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/spec.htm .  This article also appears as chap. 2 in Brian Kahin, and Hal Varian, eds., Internet Publishing and Beyond: The Economics of Digital Information and Intellectual Property, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).

Michael H. Goldhaber, "The attention economy and the Net," http://ksgwww.harvard.edu/iip/econ/goldhaber.htm .

Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, chap. 7, "Networks and positive feedback," in Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, (Boston:  Harvard Business School Press, 1998), pp. 173-225.  Coursepack.

Robert E. Goodin, "Institutions and their design," in Robert E. Goodin, ed., The Theory of Institutional Design, (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press), 1996, pp. 1-53.  Coursepack.

Douglass North, "Institutions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 5, no. 1, 1991, pp. 97-112.

James Brian Quinn, chap. 4, "Revolutionizing organizational strategies," in Intelligent Enterprise: A Knowledge and Service Based Paradigm for Industry, (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 101-145.  Coursepack.

Thomas H. Davenport, "Saving IT's soul:  Human-centered information management," Harvard Business Review, March 1994, pp. 119-131.

Wanda J. Orlikowski, "Learning from Notes: organizational issues in groupware implementation," in Rob Kling, ed., Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, 2nd ed., (New York: Academic Press, 1996), pp. 173-189.  Coursepack.

John L. King, "Where are the payoffs from computerization? Technology, learning, and organizational change," in Rob Kling, ed., Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, 2nd ed., (New York: Academic Press, 1996), pp. 239-260.  Coursepack.

Ken Kraemer and Jason Dedrick, "The Productivity Paradox:  Is it resolved?  Is there a new one? What does it all mean for managers?" CRITO Working Paper series, University of California, Irvine, February 2001, http://www.crito.uci.edu/itr/publications/pdf/it_prod_paradox.pdf

Clips for fun

Saul Hansell, "Clash of technologies in merger," New York Times, 13 April 1998, p. C4.
Steven Greenhouse, "E-mail lessens the drudgery for secretaries," New York Times, 24 April 1996, pp. B1, B6.

Friedrich A. Hayek, "The use of knowledge in society," in Individualism and Economic Order, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 77-91.  Coursepack.

Ronald H. Coase, "The nature of the firm," Economica NS 4, 1937, pp. 385-405. Reprinted in Oliver E. Williamson and Sidney G. Winter, The Nature of the Firm: Origins, Evolution, and Development, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 18-33.  Coursepack.

Mark Casson, "Economic perspectives on business information," in Lisa Bud-Frierman, ed., Information Acumen: The Understanding and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business, (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 136-167.  Coursepack.

Thomas W. Malone, Joanne Yates, and Robert I. Benjamin, "Electronic markets and electronic hierarchies," Communications of the ACM, vol. 30, issue 6, 1987, pp. 484-497.

Clips for fun

Michael Schroeder and Randall Smith, "Sweeping change in market structure sought," Wall Street Journal, 29 February 2000, pp. C1, C22.
Thomas S. Mulligan, "Schwab, markets battle centralization of system," Los Angeles Times, 1 March 2000, p. C4.
Greg Ip, "Archipelago to set up new stock market," Wall Street Journal, 15 March 2000, pp. C1, C20.
Jacob M. Schlesinger, "Puzzled investors ask: Will the real economy step forward?," Wall Street Journal, 22 March 2000, pp. A1, A12.
Stephanie Simon, "Internet changing the way some lawyers do business," Los Angeles Times, 8 July 1996, pp. A1, A15.
Amy Stevens, "Clients second-guess legal fees on-line," Wall Street Journal, 6 January 1995, pp. B1, B6.
Bob Tedeschi, "Internet reshapes the construction industry," New York Times, 21 February 2000.
Lee Berton, "Many firms cut staff in accounts payable and pay a steep price," Wall Street Journal, 5 September 1996, pp. A1, A6.
John W. Verity, "Invoice? What's an invoice?," Business Week, 10 June 1996, pp. 111-112.
Bob Tedeschi, "Creating marketplaces for business-to-business transactions," New York Times, 24 January 2000.
Shawn Tully, "The B2B tool that really is changing the world," Fortune vol. 141, no. 6, 20 March 2000.
Saul Hansell, "Hackers' bazaar: Online auction services put haggling back into sales," New York Times, 2 April 1998.
Alexandra Harney, "Up close but impersonal," Financial Times, 10 March 2000, p. 16.

Class discussion:  preliminary reports from the field.  What's going on it target institutions?

G. David Garson, "Information systems, politics, and government:  leading theoretical perspectives," in Handbook of Public Information Systems, G. David Garson, ed., (New York:  Marcel Dekker, 2000), pp. 591-609.  Coursepack.

Chris C. Demchak, Christian Friis, and Todd M. La Porte, "Reflections on configuring public agencies in cyberspace:  a conceptual investigation," in Public Administration in an Information Age:  A Handbook, I. Th. M. Snellen and W. B. H. J. van de Donk, eds., (Amsterdam:  IOS Press, 1998), pp. 225-244, http://www.cyprg.arizona.edu/publications/reflect.rtf

Philip E. Agre, "The dynamics of policy in a networked world," draft paper presented at the Nautilus Institute workshop on The Internet and International Systems:  Information Technology and American Foreign Policy Decisionmaking, December 10, 1999, San Francisco, http://www.nautilus.org/info-policy/workshop/papers/agre.html

Survey of "Government and the Internet," The Economist, 22 June 2000.

David M. Levy and Catherine C. Marshall, "Going digital: A look at assumptions underlying digital libraries," Communications of the ACM 38(4), 1995, pp. 77-84.  Also available at http://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/journals/cacm/1995-38-4/p77-levy/p77-levy.pdf

Philip E. Agre, "Information and institutional change: the case of digital libraries," http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/dl.html . Revised  version in Ann P. Bishop, Barbara P. Butterfield, and Nancy Van House, eds., Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation, (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 2000).

Philip E. Agre, "The distances of education," Academe, vol. 85, no. 5, 1999, pp. 37-41.  Draft version:  http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/academe.html

John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, "Universities in the digital age," in Brian L. Hawkins and Patricia Battin, eds., The Mirage of Continuity: Reconfiguring Academic Information Resources for the 21st Century, (Washington, DC: Council on Library Resources, 1998), pp. 39-60.  Revised as chap. 8, "Re-education," The Social Life of Information, (Boston:  Harvard Business School Press, 2000), pp. 207-241.  Coursepack.

David Noble, "Digital diploma mills: the automation of higher education," First Monday,October 1997, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue3_1/noble/index.html

M. M. Scott, "Intellectual property rights: a ticking time bomb in academia," Academe, vol. 84, no. 3, 1998, pp. 22-26.

Clips for fun

Vincent Kiernan, "Internet-based 'collaboratories' help scientists work together," Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 March 1999.
Kenneth R. Weiss, "A wary academia on the edge of cyberspace," Los Angeles Times, 31 March 1998, pp. A1, A23.
James Glanz, "The world of science becomes a global village," New York Times, May 1, 2001, pp. F1.

Gary Chapman and Lodis Rhodes, "Nurturing neighborhood nets," Technology Review, October 1997, pp. 48-54, http://web.mit.edu/org/t/techreview/www/articles/oct97/chapman.html

Willard Uncapher, "Electronic homesteading on the rural frontier: Big Sky Telegraph and its community," in Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock, eds., Communities in Cyberspace, (London:  Routledge, 1999), pp. 264-289.

Jan A. English-Lueck, "Technology and social change: The effects on family and community," paper presented at the COSSA Congressional Seminar, 19 June 1998, http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/CossaP.htm

Philip E. Agre, "Building an Internet culture," Telematics and Informatics, vol. 15,no. 3, 1998, pp. 231-234.  Draft version:  http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/internet-culture.html

Elfreda A. Chatman, "The impoverished life-world of outsiders," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 47, no. 3, 1996, pp. 193-206.

Clips for fun

Simon Romero, "Weavers go dot-com, and elders move in," New York Times, 28 March 2000.

N. Butcher, "The possibilities and pitfalls of harnessing ICTs to accelerate social development: a South African perspective," SAIDE: Johannesburg, April 1998, paper prepared for the UNRISD Conference on Information Technologies and Social Development, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 22-24 June 1998,
http://www.saide.org.za/butcher1/unrisd.htm.

Richard Heeks, David Mundy and Angel Salazar, "Why health care information systems succeed or fail," Information Systems for Public Sector Management Working Paper Series, no. 9, (Manchester: University of Manchester, Institute for Development Policy and Management, 1998), http://www.man.ac.uk/idpm/isps_wp9.htm.

Castells, Manuel, "Information technology, globalization and social development," paper prepared for the UNRISD Conference on Information Technologies and Social Development, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 22-24 June 1998, http://www.unrisd.org/infotech/conferen/castelp1.htm

World Bank, Global Distance EducationNet, http://www1.worldbank.org/disted/index.htm.

Andrew Blau, "More than bit players:  how information technology will change the ways nonprofits and foundations work and thrive in the Information Age:  a report to the Surdna Foundation," May, 2001, http://www.surdna.org/documents/morefinal.pdf

Giorgio Di Pietro, "NGOs and the Internet:  use and repercussions," IPTS Report, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, no. 48, October, 2000, pp. 23-27.

Ken Rutherford, "The landmine ban and NGOs: the role of communications technologies," draft paper presented at the Nautilus Institute workshop on The Internet and International Systems:  Information Technology and American Foreign Policy Decisionmaking, December 10, 1999, San Francisco, http://www.nautilus.org/info-policy/workshop/papers/rutherford.html

Wolfgang H. Reinicke and Francis Deng, chaps. 1, 2 and 3, "Introduction," "A changing external environment," and "What do networks do?", Critical Choices:  The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance, (Ottawa:  International Development Research Centre, 1999, 2000), http://www.idrc.ca/acb/showdetl.cfm?&DS_ID=2&Product_ID=534&DID=6.

Batya Friedman and Helen Nissenbaum, "Bias in computer systems," in Batya Friedman, ed., Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology, Cambridge University Press, 1997.  Coursepack.

Joel R. Reidenberg, "Lex Informatica: The formulation of information policy rules through technology," Texas Law Review vol. 76, no. 3, 1998, pp. 553-593.

Lawrence Lessig, chap. 3, "Is-Ism", chap. 4, "Architectures of control," chap. 5, "Regulating code," in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, (New York:  Basic Books, 1999), pp. 24-60.  Coursepack.

David G. Post, "Governing cyberspace," Wayne Law Review 43, 1996, pp. 155-171.

Cips for fun

Alexander Stille, "Adding up the costs of cyberdemocracy", New York Times, June 2, 2001, p. 9.

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Term project papers due