A fairly relaxing day, only a couple of chapters from The Social Life of Information. Once again, for this book, which is not conceptually new but which highlights a number of important principles, is best handled by a series of bullet points.

• "hot desking" - providing a laptop & cell phone so one can work anywhere
• rapid innovation (due to technology) can be destabilizing (p. 75)
• The office social system plays a major part in keeping tools (and people) up and running
• 30% of "expenses" is due to the "futz factor" - "the time users spend in a befuddled state while clearing up unexplained happenings and overcoming the confusion and panic when computers produce enigmatic messages that stop work" (p. 77)
• home office workers usually lack necessary peer support
• Lacking the boundaries and structures provided by office life, work spills over into private and family life. (p. 78)
• technology design has not taken adequate account of work and its demands but instead has aimed at an idealized image of individuals and information. (p. 85)
• "Outcomes are generally less important than process" (p. 94)
• Process owners are focussed on process, not on personnel. Personnel for their part seem to face the option of getting on board or getting out. Opportunities for them to craft, change, own, or take charge of process in any meaningful way are limited. Improvisation and 'local' knowledge have little place in the schema. (p. 98)
• we tend to think of knowledge less like an assembly of discrete parts and more like a watercolor painting. As each new color is added, it blends with the others to produce the final effect, in which the contributing parts become indivisible. (p. 106)
• all organizations have to balance routine and improvisation (p. 109)