When only the self is real
Gail E. Bader, James M. Nyce · ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation · 1998
an cultural analysis play a role in information systems development as it is presently undertaken in the United States?On the one hand, the answer to this question is yes.Cultural analysis has insight to offer into why we design systems the way we do, how systems are understood, used and evaluated, and why we see some systems as powerful or weak.On the other hand, the answer is no.It will not play a role in systems development if by this we mean cultural analysis will become a routine part of any actual design process.In other words, despite claims to the contrary (Blomberg, Giacomi, Mosher and Swenton-Wall, 1993), it seems unlikely that cultural analysis will ever become part of the tool kit developers and programmers habitually draw upon.This is a strong claim, of course, and why we believe it to be true is the subject of this paper.