Mark Gibbs writes in a NetworkWorldFusion opinion piece (Collaboration technology: Just a lot of noise?), and asserts that instant messaging is a time sink whose supposed performance benefits are bunk:
"And the answer to whether we are, in general, more productive because of collaboration technologies is, I doubt it. Just consider the problems caused by instant messaging, a tool that is often a distraction and a cause of social friction.
From what my readers tell me, the instant-messaging problem is common in many organizations, where it is definitely as much a waste of time as it is a useful communications tool. "
But his reasoning later on is that the technology is not to blame: its those nasty, nasty people who are unable to learn how to effectively use communication technologies -- like IM and email -- appropriately.
Personally, I think this is an entirely wrong-headed and incorrect conclusion. Instant messaging, and other collaboration technologies (email, web conferencing, etc.) have led to enormous gains in productivity, at least in all objective studies that have been made. IM use alone leads to significant reduction of phone bills, email, and unnecessary meetings, and the secondary impacts of amplifying syncronization in networks of communicating groups ("Boyd's Law") may be the next revolution in extra-enterprise productivity.
With every new communication medium, business pundits declaim that employees may (gasp) use the new medium to communicate about things other than "business" and therefore waste time and company money. The same argument was leveled against putting a telephone on every employee's desk back in the early 20th century, and of course when enterprise email was being rolled out.
Business people seem to have an insatiable hunger for better communication media, and they will adopt whatever comes along -- fax, cell phones, email, IM, social networking -- if it helps them advance their personal agendas. Gibbs is -- like many others -- railing about the ettiquette that surrounds these communication tools, and the disruption that arises when people start to adopt and apply them.
His contention that people are natively lazy and undisciplined shows us where he thinks the fault lies: in the human soul, not in technology:
"We, as human animals, are intrinsically problematic when we are collaborating. We are driven by history and biology to look for connection, to get accepted by the "tribe," to seek approval, to be wary of offense, to exercise hierarchical dominance and rivalry, and to indulge ourselves in ritualistic antagonism. And we're lazy and undisciplined. We don't take kindly to detail and concentration."
I agree that we are tribal, and emotional; fine. But the rest of his position is just diatribe: formulaic screed that pretends to offer a big insight into the issues of technology adoption, but instead is just a pessimistic worldview disguised as sociology.
Virginia Postrel, in The Future and Its Enemies, dissected this mindset: those that are opposed to the instability inherent in innovation and change, which is what Gibbs is sharpening his ax about.
"The future we face at the dawn of the twenty-first century is, like all futures left to themselves, "emergent, complex messiness." Its "messiness" lies not in disorder, but in an order that is unpredictable, spontaneous, and ever-shifting, a pattern created by millions of uncoordinated, independent decisions. That pattern contains not just a few high-tech gizmos, but all the variegated aspects of life."
"Some people look at such diverse, decentralized, choice-driven systems and rejoice, even when they don't like particular choices. Others recoil. In pursuit of stability and control, they seek to eliminate or curb these unruly, too-creative forces."
In Gibbs, we see an enemy of the future, riled up by all that collaborative chat going on, howling about "the messaging noise problem" as he calls it. But to others, all those folks IMing like mad isn't a problem, but the emergence of new, and ultimately better, ways to interact.
Postrel might have been talking about Gibbs' piece when she lambasts "Stasists," those that oppose the novel:
"Stacist social criticism -- which is to say essentially all social criticism -- brings up specifics of life only to sneer at or bash them. Critics assume that readers will share their attitudes and will see contemporary life as a problem demanding immediate action by the powerful and wise. This relentlessly hostile view of how we live, and how we may come to live, is distorted and dangerous."
Amen.
