Finding the Ghost in the Machine. A Janus perspective.
Jeffry Stephen Babb · Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2017
The essays of both Hanne Cecilie Geirbo and Per-Anders Hillgren offer pause for reflection at a significant time in the progression of the information systems discipline.At first blush, one could be led astray to believe that these essays may be exactly what Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) had in mind with respect to questioning and calling for balance in our disciplinary theorizing (Weick 1995); i.e.; are these Information Systems topics?However, the somewhat pendular and undular nature of our discourse concerning Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS) phenomena is a reflection of both emergence and perturbation in the context of IT and IS design, use, and promulgation.As there is a saying "you can never cross the same river twice," the persistence of the vexing paradoxes we face (Kautz et al. 2007) is both uncanny and fascinating.Geirbo and Hillgen speak to the essence of these paradoxes.Their essays share that reflection, imagination, and metaphor are useful tools as we consider the balance and locus of agency in the design of inhabited spaces.Their thoughts are prescient given recent questions concerning our relationship to the agency we bestow upon algorithmic intelligences and their impacts (Sørensen 2016).These questions reinforce a duality in the IS discipline which is not entirely removed from Gilbert Ryle's (2009) exposition on the mind/body continuum: are we ghosts in the machine?Utilizing the metaphors of the Janus, and of Holonic systems, I reflect on what lessons Geirbo and Hillgen offer for information systems researchers.In their essays, Geirbo and Hillgren, reflect on the design and shaping of the environments that surround us.As such, they provide useful insights regarding design choices available for