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很高兴邀请到数字化转型专家Dr.John 。下面分享一篇John 和他的伙伴对信息技术意义理论的探讨，希望能给到你们一些启发。
TOWARD A THEORY OF MEANING FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES:
A Journey from the Theory of Communicative Action to the philosophical perspectives of Kant, Husserl and HeideggerCase Western Reserve University, USAEmmanuel Monod, Paris-Dauphine University and Case Western Reserve University, USA
The theories of information and communication technologies tend to focus more on cognition and logic than on emotions and symbolism. This proposal calls for a theory of meaning that should complement information theory in information systems (Hereinafter "I.S."). Even though its influence was limited in IS, Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action is currently used extensively in Media Studies. Habermas’ concepts of steering media, technicization, norm-free systemic mechanisms and delinguistification are currently used in Media Studies for analyzing the dangers of social media employing concepts such as connectivity and connectedness, platform programmability, algorithmic popularity anddatafication. In Information Systems research, Zuboff’s (1988) distinction between automate andinformate initiated a line of work toward a theory of meaning relying on dichotomies such as representational and experiential computing, symbolic interaction and the power of ideal conversation. However, such a theory may also find inspiration in philosophy. Kant’s distinction between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason, Husserl’s reification of the lifeworld and Heidegger’s contrast between distantiation andwith-being, but also between averageness and innerwordliness may contribute to understand the contrasting transformative effects of different types of technologies.Keywords: theory of meaning, theory of communicative action, information theory, social media, media studies, phenomenology, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger.
The theories that explicitly and implicitly shape our behavior do both highlighting and hiding certain aspects of the phenomena we attend to.
The Information Systems (IS) discipline has developed a theoretical “blind spot” over the last 50 to 60 years, which hides the importance of meaning. The concerns that were evident from our disciplines earliest writings on Technology, Systems, Information, Communication and Organizing were expansive and inclusive of the foundational role that human language played in IS. There was mention of an inherent limit of information theory (Shannon 1948) in that it concerned the transmission of bits, not meaning, yet the predominant concern of information systems is directed toward its role in decision making. Theories in IS tend to overestimate the importance of cognition compared to emotions (Burton-Jones 2014). By contrast, the theme of the Academy of Management conference was in 2017 “making organizations more meaningful” and, in 2018, “improving lives”. This research calls for a theory of meaning that would complement information theory in IS.For instance, compared to IS research, the dangers of social media are considered much more extensively in media studies (McLean. and Wainwright 2009). One of the differences between IS and media studies is that the latter relies strongly on the theory of steering media written Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action. This research aims to introduce Habermas’ theory of steering media, the second one will describe its application in media studies to the critique of social media. The third part will indicate the thread in IS research initiated by Zuboff (1988) that may serve as a basis of a theory of meaning that should be however discussed with philosophical foundations introduced in the fourth part.
For Habermas (1984), a medium is an entity that enables social relations. He distinguishes between the steering media such as money and power on the one hand and unmediated communicative action on the other hand.
The transfer of action coordination from language over to steering media means uncoupling of interaction from lifeworld contexts. The lifeworld is no longer needed for the coordination of action. Societal subsystems differentiated out via media of this kind can make themselves independent out of the lifeworld which gest shunted aside into the system environment. Delinguistified media of communication such as money and power connect up interactions in space and time into more and more complex networks that no one has to comprehend or be responsible for. Systemic mechanisms create their own, norm-free social structures jutting out from the lifeworld.
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