This seminar explores two questions. The first question is "what is social capital?" Assuming we can come to a consensus answer to this question along the lines that have already been suggested by Putnam and others, the second and more interesting question to be addressed in this seminar is "how might systems be designed to prevent the erosion of, or encourage the development of, social capital?"
Let me suggest that we begin by thinking of "social capital" as a analogous term to "human capital" which was itself created by analogy to the term "physical capital." Physical capital in an organization would be the things that are owned by the corporation - the typewriters, computers, buildings, manufacturing equipment, etc. The physical capital might be worth a lot or very little. There are a variety of well defined measures by which the value of the physical capital might be defined.
The human capital in an organization consists of the workers in an organization. This capital may be worth a lot or a little. There are a variety of measures, not quite so simple of course, by which human capital might be measured. Intertwined with the human capital would seem to be another kind of capital. Take a first rate salesman, whom we all agree represents a high level of human capital, and move him or her to another organization. It is not hard to imagine scenarios in which the salesman might fail. Why? Maybe in the new organization, the salesman did not have the contacts he or she had in the old organization. More specifically, we might imagine a widget salesman in Pittsburgh who does a wonderful business, but fails to sell widgets in Cleveland. We might further imagine that over the years in Pittsburgh, the salesman developed relationships with clients that allowed for high sales, given overall competence. Moving to Cleveland, the salesman now had to complete with another widget salesman who had extensive relationships with his or her clients. People continued, in a reasonably competitive market to work with the person they knew and trusted. These relationships of trust might represent social capital squandered when the salesman left Pittsburgh, and an example of the competition between social and human capital in Cleveland. (Indeed, as novices in this field, we might go on to speculate about some formula which would make sales ability a function of the human capital and the social capital embodied in the competing agents.
Well, that may be one example of social capital. You might imagine many more personal examples. Think about the person who always seems to know someone with whom they can barter or get something wholesale. Why? Is it magic or is it something that might be described as social capital. We could call it friendships. We could call it pay backs. We could call it favors. We could call it social capital - investment in a relationship.
We could speculate that the primary reason why computers are used in organizations is the preserve and enhance the physical capital of the organization. I would be so bold as to suggest that more recently, with the development of the PC and graphical user interfaces, we have begun to use computers to preserve and enhance the human capital in organizations. Information system designers recognize that it is important to design systems in such a way that the investment in workers is optimized. There are a lot of terms that are used to describe the value of workers to organizations, but few would argue that one legitimate term is "human capital". While one might find arguments in the literature about the best way to describe this corporate asset, it is clear that just as organizations have long invested in physical capital of one sort or another, now there is a recognition that organizations must invest in workers as well. Salary is only one form of that investment. Other forms of investment include training and education, fringe benefits, quality of work life, etc. From an interactive system design perspective, there is a strong awareness that design has an impact on how humans use a system. Put more bluntly, system design can increase or decrease human capital.
IF, and that is a big IF, there is such a thing as social capital, and IF, and that is a big IF too, we can somehow begin to define what constitutes social capital, can we see any mechanisms by which we might define "an "Interactive Social Interface (ISI)" that preserves and enhances social capital in the way that "a Graphical User Interface (GUI)" enhances and preserves human capital. Again, there are some big leaps here, so let me back off and readdress. I made the assumption that Graphical User Interfaces were a conscious effort to preserve and enhance human capital. I think that they do do that, but my guess is that the evolution toward these graphical interfaces is far from a conscious effort at preserving and enhancing human capital. Nonetheless, I think that we would agree in retrospect that what we now see in graphical interfaces off loads work onto the machine from the human and optimizes the things that only the human can do. As importantly, or perhaps more importantly, the GUI empowers the human, makes them better, more valuable. Is there an "Interactive Social Interface" or ISI somewhere in our future that would do for social capital what the GUI has done for human capital. Let me suggest a few scenarios as starting points for this part of the discussion.
Keep in mind that these may not be particularly good examples. It is really up to you to find better ones.
This is a doctoral seminar that provides an opportunity for doctoral students to explore an emerging area in the field of information science.
Doctoral students are individuals who have successfully completed their preliminary examination. This course is not intended for doctoral students who are still preparing for their preliminary examination. It is also not intended for Masters students. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and if you should think that you, or your situation are exceptional in some way, I would be happy to talk to you about your participation.
Doctoral students are individuals who are prepared to explore new subject matter, discuss issues intelligently, prepare written work, conduct research, and build systems. Doctoral students are self motivated by the desire to pursue new knowledge.
As you may know, I have been working with several graduate students over the last several years on a system to support collaborative authoring(CASCADE). It as yet, has no facilities that preserve or enhance social capital. At the same time, we might use it as a test bed to begin to get some sense of what social capital is and how systems might need to be designed to preserve and enhance it. I suggest that during our first two seminars, we spend time thinking about how we might conduct a mini experiment using this seminar and CASCADE to look at the issues. I have used CASCADE in enough classes to know that people would prefer to come to class rather than interact through CASCADE - why, what is going on, can it be quantified, can it be fixed in the system, etc.?
What we need to do is to agree on the precise tasks or areas of tasks that we will do electronically and then commit to doing them. We will also need to do some self observation and reporting as well as using CASCADE to gather some objective measures and data. We will need to all get familiar enough with CASCADE that learning is not an issue and that what we are measuring has to do with functional use of the system toward some goals.
Do a literature search on physical, human, and social capital and develop clear and unambiguous definitions and measures.
Develop an agent for CASCADE that provides a social periphery for users.
Conduct an experiment using the students from the Standards course to try to identify the social factors that are llacking in an electronic version of a course delivered by a technology like CASCADE.
Bracco, D.M. Profile of the Virtual Employee and Their Office. IEMC 96 Proceedings, Vancouver, BC. August 18-20, 1996. 1996 IEEE pp79 - 88.
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid. Keeping it Simple. In Winograd, T. with J. Bennett, L. DeYoung, and B. Hartfield. Bring Design to Software, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. 1996.
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid Borderline Issues, Social and Material Aspects of Design. The Journal Human-Computer Interaction, 1993, pp. 1 - 28.
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid. Enacting Design for the Workplace. "Technology and the Future of Work," held at Stanford University, March 28-30, 1990. Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 164 - 197.
Brown, J.S. and P. Duguid. The University's Digital Future. Change. July/August, 1996. pp 11 - 19.
Gamm, G. and R.D. Putnam. Association-Building in America, 1850-1920. Paper originally presented at the 1996 annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, 10-13 October 1996, New Orleans, Louisiana. November 19, 1996.
Hartman, F. Dr. and C. Guss. Virtual Teams - Constrained by Technology or Culture? IEMC 96 Proceedings; 1996 IEEE. pp 285 - 190.
Kimble, C. and T. Conkar. The Future of Information Systems - Using Social Systems to Create Protocols for the Virtual Environment. (Systems Analysis through Social Analysis.) IEMC 96 Proceedings; 1996 IEEE, pp 241 - 246.
Putnam, R.D. The Strange Disappearance of Civic America. American Prospect, Winter 1995, #24, pp 34 - 48.
Putnam, R.D. Foundations of Democracy, Bowling Alone, Revisited. The Responsive Community, Spring 1995.
Putnam, R.D. The Prosperous Community , Social Capital and Public Life. The American Prospect, #13, Spring, 1993. pp 35-42.
Resnick, M. Distributed Constructionism. Proceedings of the International Conference on the Learning Sciences Association of the Advancement of Computing in Education Northwestern University. accepted: March 1996; published: July 1996.