Birds Eye View

Orlikowski and Iacono's different views of technology provide a good framework through which technology can and should be viewed. I think that these views can be very useful tobuild holistic technology systems that do not ignore certain aspects of the technology that may be critical to its success.Being aware of and understanding these views helps me look at things from a different perspective. It is often that i find myself in a discussion around opposite views of aparticular technology with someone... what these views provide me with is the ability to look at the background of where the opposing view is coming from and in so doingunderstand why the opposing view may or may not be valid. It also then gives me a way to better explain my perspective.. in saying "well from a computational view such and sucha technology is great, but from a proxy view i can see why it still needs some enhancement..."

The research paper by Hsiao, Wu and Hou also presents a very interesting and relevant view of how technology can be not only be viewed differently but also used and exploiteddifferently depending on how it is perceived. The article higlights quite nicely how the social aspect of the users of the technology plays a vital role in how that technologyis used and how that could be so different from the way in which the designers of that technology envisaged the technology to be used.