Information Ecologies ― Using Technology With Heart

The common rhetoric about technology falls into two extreme categories: uncriticalacceptance or blanket rejection. Claiming a middle ground, Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O'Day call forresponsible, informed engagement with technology in local settings, which they call informationecologies.An information ecology is a system of people, practices, technologies, and values in alocal environment. Nardi and O'Day encourage the reader to become more aware of the ways people andtechnology are interrelated. They draw on their empirical research in offices, libraries, schools,and hospitals to show how people can engage their own values and commitments while usingtechnology.

Bonnie A. Nardi is Associate Professor in the School of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of A Small Matter of Programming (1993), and coauthor of Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart (1999), both published by the MIT Press.