In reading Peter Morville's Ambient Findability I came across something on the topic of gossip that related to an earlier post of mine, Losing nuance: Working remotely. It's this:
"Despite huge investments in information and communication technology, we still rely heavily on informal person-to-person networks known as 'the grapevine.' And we often trust this 'unofficial news' more than the 'official story.'"
Morville discusses how we humans behave, how any system has to take people into account, and design requires empathy for the user. While not necessarily rational, we rely on gossip as an information sharing system because, while technology may advance quickly, human evolution does not.
Where this relates to my earlier post is in how this gossip aspect, the "watercooler" information exchange, is one of the things lost in working remotely, and is a primary form of communication for people (rightly or wrongly). Yes, there is email, text messaging and so on, and we do use them as gossip mediums, but it's the person-to-person, in person interaction where the main exchange occurs.
And that is lost.
(btw ... Ambient Findability appears to be headed to my list of favourite, most useful books. It's one of those books I think anyone engaged in the tech field - or any field for that matter - should read. It should be required reading.)
Listen
Follow Writelife on Twitter
