17. Concluding Remarks: New Pathways

It is perhaps stating the blindingly obvious when we say that technologically, organisationally, and socially, we are experiencing rapid change. Whether, however, our analytic approaches have kept up is an open question. In these concluding remarks, we examine the changing face of social, organisational, and work practice as a dynamic sociotechnical phenomenon and present an argument for a modest and productive approach to generalisation which will allow us to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, case studies which can be narrowly focused and short-term and, on the other, decisions about the appropriate level of generality which might allow us to transfer insights and be a basis for technological design. We use the word ‘modest’ advisedly here for some part of what we have to say will be avowedly polemic. Many of the problems we discuss are not new. Issues around participation, the politics of design, the role of the reflexive researcher, and so on have been discussed ad nauseam. Our main contention, however, is that we have yet to provide a systematic alternative to more conventional approaches to the investigation and design relationship. We see this to be the focus of an emerging discourse on socially embedded technologies. In the following, we will elaborate on such a research agenda, developing it out of a critical evaluation of the state of the art in the CSCW discourse.