Reading “all about” computerization: How genre conventions shape nonfiction social analysis

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This paper examines unstated, but critical, social assumptions that underlie social analyses of computerization. It focuses on the popular, professional, and scholarly literature that claims to describe the actual nature of computerization, the character of computer use, and the social choices and changes that result from computerization. Many articles and books in this large and diverse literature are written within the conventions of specific genres. The conventions of each of these genres limit the kinds of ideas that authors can explore and communicate effectively. This paper examines five common and important genres: technological utopianism, technological antiutopianism, social realism, social theory, and analytical reduction. Each genre is characterized and illustrated. The strengths and weaknesses of each genre are described. A major theme of this paper is the way that any genre's conventions limits the kinds of ideas that authors can examine and communicate. In the 1990s, there will be a large market for social analyses of computerization. Technological Utopian analyses are most likely to dominate the popular and professional discourse. The empirically oriented accounts of social realism, social theory, and analytical reduction are likely to be much less common and also less commonly seen and read by computer professionals and policymakers. These genres are relatively subtle, portray a more ambiguous world, and have less rhetorical power to capture readers’ imaginations. Even though they are more scientific, these empirically anchored genres don't seem to appeal to many scientists and engineers. It is ironic that computing—often portrayed as an instrument of knowledge—is primarily the subject of popular and professional literatures that are heavily weighted toward the genres whose knowledge claims are least reliable. Conversely, the more reliable genres often have much less appeal in the computer science and engineering communities.