The order of technology : complexity and control in a connected world

Kallinikos, Jannis ORCID: 0000-0002-4446-2878 (2005) The order of technology : complexity and control in a connected world. Information and Organization, 15 (3). pp. 185-202. ISSN 1471-7727

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Abstract

This paper examines some of the implications associated with the growing complexity of the contemporary world, consequent upon the expanding economic and organizational involvement of ICT-based systems and artefacts. Drawing on Luhmann, traditional forms of technological control are analyzed in terms of functional simplification and closure. Functional simplification involves the demarcation of an operational domain within which the complexity of the world is reconstructed as a simplified set of causal or instrumental relations. Functional closure implies the construction of a protective cocoon that is placed around the selected causal sequences to ensure their recurrent unfolding. While possible to analyze in similar terms, current developments, as manifested in the diffusion of large-scale information systems and mostly the internet spin a web of technological relations that challenge the strategies of functional simplification and closure and the organizational practices that have traditionally accommodated them.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://www.elsevier.com/locate/infoandorg
Additional Information:	Published 2005 © Elsevier Ltd. LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website.
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	T Technology > T Technology (General)
Date Deposited:	26 Jun 2006
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 22:56
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/457

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