"Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome" Friedrich Nietzsche, Gotzendammerung, 26
10. Epilogue and Further Research
The thought experiment is a representation of the result of my research in an argumentative form. With hindsight I can evaluate my research from the distance which I gained during writing up the dissertation. I have emerged again from academic work into the Alltag where all our actions have to stand up to the
question: so what? This is especially valid in the case of a scientific treatise, which aims at contributing to the body of our knowledge. The question in this case is: what does the thought experiment tell us? I will try to give a personal account of what the thought experiment demonstrates. Therefore, the academic style of the previous two parts will be dropped in favour of a style which is more appropriate for such an evaluation.
A proposition recurring throughout this dissertation has been that it is impossible to reach an objective and universal meaning for ‘information system’. This raises the question whether that proposition is just an excuse for not coming to the point. Especially the critical stance towards the concept of knowledge seems to caricature the ethic of scientific research. Yet, the sceptical stance towards knowledge, that it is impossible to know what knowledge is, is not new. Consequently, this cannot be the contribution of my research.
Neither is it new that we do not really know what ‘system’, or for that matter ‘information system’, is. The question of system and its juxtaposition to a system highlights the dilemma of the difference between ideal and reality which has
characterised much of occidental thought since Plato formulated his theory of ideas. Evidently, I cannot claim to have made that contribution either.
Nevertheless, I think that there is some ‘news value’ in my research. The
controversial debates that followed the seminars which I gave in November 1989 and 1990 at the LSE as well as the discussions I had with staff and students there, were not just a consequence of an inability to communicate my ideas. There is an
element of challenge in the ideas that is new to the study of IS. I will try to work out that element and suggest further research.
Further research is, as I hinted in chapter one, a tricky issue for a research that is so critical of scholarship. Again, the ideal of scholarship has to be seen in the light of real scholarship. There can be no question that all too human influences
pervade scholarship. Pride, pressure and promotion impair the ideal of ‘pure’ research. Yet, I would be the last to lament the human conduct of human beings. I believe (and I am afraid there is not much else to be done) that researchers will pursue knowledge in a ‘proper’ way, and that they will always strive for the ideal. How effective and relevant such research will be is another m atter on which I shall comment upon later.
As explained in chapter two, this dissertation is not trying to impose a scientific fact, but to demonstrate an argument with the aim to communicate its relevance. The reader has to decide for himself whether ideology and information systems are indeed connected. Speaking for myself, I think the connection is quite fruitful. I set out to approach it by means of sociology. From an initial understanding of sociological theory I gained in lectures on Organizational Theory and Behaviour and on Information which I took at the LSE, I started a more thorough study of basic principles of sociology and especially of the sociology of science, knowledge and religion. By doing this I neglected the opportunity to approach it by means of semiology, which was much closer to my previous experiences from the M.Sc.-
course which I attended at the LSE prior to this research. The work of de
Saussure, Barthes and others offers tremendous scope for building a bridge from semiology to the study of IS. This would be one direction of further research where sound scholarship can bring a vast body of literature into a relevant connection to the study of IS. However, during the course of my research, I got less interested in the possibility of interdisciplinary scholarship, and more in its effect and relevance. Therefore I pursued the argument of ideology and
information systems along those lines.
Another direction of further research would be to look at power and authority. As the concept of ideology in its political sense suggests, there is a whole body of literature on how power and authority and its use affect our knowledge. The writings of scholars like Feyerabend who has written about "anarchic" [1975] approaches to the philosophy of science can be the starting point for such an investigation into the politics of knowledge. I see this as a consequence of a primary sociological investigation into the concepts of ideology and information systems. Not only does the sociological perspective of these two concepts afford a treatm ent of power and authority, as has been mentioned in the thought
experiment, but this finding also demands an investigation into how power and authority are handled. The question of living with ideologies and the sources of power and authority that support them leads directly to literature of politics.
A third direction of further research is to investigate the ‘unphilosophical’ treatment of information systems. Why do people take information systems for granted and busy themselves with research programmes, prototypes, conferences, etc. when the signs are indicating that we do not even know what information systems are let alone what their consequences are going to be. I see this as the most interesting consequence of my research. The discussion I intended to set in motion with this dissertation leads directly to questions of cosmology. Information systems can be seen as today’s catalysts of many business problems. That many
information systems have not solved them but rather created additional ones is indicative of the ideological nature of the persistent dynamic of computerisation. How this ideology exerts its momentum, what consequences this has and how these consequences can be managed are, in my opinion, the most interesting directions for future research.
In my opinion, those are the three most important areas of further research emanating from this dissertation. However, evaluating the thought experiment from within a scientific framework is not enough. The intense preoccupation with scientific questions has put me often in the position to my research that Rubachov took toward communist theory. The motto above this chapter has its meaning here, because the aseptic clarity of the results of scholarship has not satisfied my curiosity. The thought experiment was set up in order to communicate the
learning curve* that resulted from my interest in the combination of ideology with information systems. The suspense which I experienced during the course of the research of never being able to find stable foundations for knowledge in the shifting ground of social reality is the message of its synthesis. In the thesis, the danger of ideological feed-back overriding experience was seen as a threat to knowledge. In the antithesis, the danger of a detachment of scholarship from the
Alltag was seen as a threat to knowledge. The formulation of these two threats and the suspense that is attached to knowledge as a consequence of these threats is the ‘news value* of the dissertation. Keeping doubt at the forefront of one*s research, rather than in its background makes a big change to scientific activity. Not to start on a basis of simplistic assumptions, but on a basis of doubt is virtuous in this respect.
This exhortation is ever new and ever old at the same time. Its general ‘philosophical* quality is as old as philosophy itself. That it emerges from a treatm ent of the subject of ‘information system* in the light of the current debate to ‘soften* the study of IS is its contemporary relevance. As such it has an
unsettling power, because it links IS-thinking and -practice to general philosophical questions, and it shows that it is analogously unfathomable.
The three directions of further research that I indicated above seem to me to support that point. All three of them as well as this dissertation itself point to a wider framework, whether that is semiology, politics, the humanities or the Alltag.
Moreover, even the confines of these domains are limited and a general appraisal of system where everything is of, potentially equal, importance has to be imagined. The effectiveness and relevance of this research converges then on a question of ethics, in the widest meaning possible of this word.
One way of approaching an ethical justification would be to say that the entire research has been tremendous fun. It has been really the fulfilment of an idea that was at the back of my mind for a long time. But is such a hedonistic argument enough? Not even Adam Smith sanctioned blind hedonism, despite his advocacy of personal achievement as the best way to overall benefit. Certainly I could argue that the development I underwent, intellectually and otherwise, is going to be reflected in my future life. Yet again, this is a very personal consequence which is not really satisfying scientific standards, even though it is enough for the Alltag.
The problem now is to avoid a scholarly discussion about what is a proper ethic. From a nihilistic point of view every ethic could be discarded as empty. However, taking rather a sceptical perspective on the matter allows to acknowledge a pluralistic scenario, without sacrificing the point of view that things are going to happen exactly the way they are going to happen. The question of ethics is, thus, not simply to be answered, but to be understood as a challenge of the human predicament.
The ‘so what’-question should be introduced to the thought experiment in the light of this sceptical perspective. The historicist and relativist perspective of the thesis
falls short of offering a convincing answer. In its dependency on assumptions, frameworks, etc. it is too much bolstered by the value it attaches to its findings as to be flexible enough to take the charge of self-importance. From the point of view of the thesis the ‘so what’-question must seem a usurper. The realist
perspective of the antithesis is not much more resilient in this respect. It has not the power to transcend its own basis of Alltag and scholarship, and the dualism that goes with it. Not even the nihilistic perspective of the synthesis has the power to come to terms with the challenge of the ‘so what’-question. While thesis and antithesis can be challenged on the basis of their assumptions, the synthesis can be challenged on the basis of its doubt and its suspense. Of course it is easier from the point of view of the synthesis to retort ‘what does it m atter’, but then that would be a very narrow ethical path.
This path is made narrow by the necessity to rehnquish the hope for invariant knowledge. As mentioned in chapter nine, the stability of one’s perspective had to be abandoned entirely to be able to face the ‘so what’-question. The price would be a very high degree of resilience, because any position could serve as a
perspective. The cost would be that any position had to be left as soon as doubt bites. From a theoretical point of view this ‘living on the edge’ is a possible solution. From a practical point of view it seems questionable to me whether it is possible to give up all stability and to enbosom oneself to resilience. As
mentioned in chapter nine, it seems to me only because we have a certain basis of stability do we have the chance for resilience and vice versa. But then, this already becomes a game of words.
There is an inherent undercurrent of elitism in this thought of ‘living on the edge’. Not only is it supposed that one strives for an ideal, which sets one apart from those who do not, but also does the consequence of high resilience entail a
determination to sacrifice stability which is not endearing. The preservation of the ego in a world of changing deceit, where knowledge is power and power is
knowledge leads to a growing suspicion "that was a certainty in ancient cynism (Kynismus): that things must first be better before you can leam anything sensible" [Sloterdijk, 1988, p.xxix].
The question remains whether this dissertation is a contribution to the body of our knowledge. It is expected that what I have to say should contribute. This is a peculiar expectation, which is what Peter Sloterdijk meant when he wrote that "the inversion of the relation between life and learning is in the air" [ibid.]. Regardless what my intentions were, there could be no guarantee that I would succeed in providing a contribution to the body of our knowledge. The trials of life force what I have to say into the maelstrom of society. What the result of this will be is beyond my control, because "it must be admitted that the structure of our social environment is man-made in a certain sense; that its institutions and traditions are neither the work of God nor of nature, but the results of human actions and decisions, and are alterable by human actions and decisions. But this does not mean that they are all consciously designed and explicable in terms of needs, hopes, or motives. On the contrary, even those which arise as the result of
conscious and intentional human actions are, as a rule, the indirect, the unintended and often the unwanted by-products o f such actions" [Popper, 1952, vol. 2, p.93]. Thus, only if we inverted the relationship between life and learning could there be a contention that a body of knowledge can be advanced by design. I am afraid, therefore, that the answer to the question whether or not my dissertation is a contribution to the body of our knowledge is: it depends!