Not only does computer technology offer the means of control mechanisms that are physically cleanly separated from the mechanisms of transforming, converting, and transmitting energy, and not only does computing technology offers the means of control mechanisms to interconnect machine systems; it also, by the same token, affords the logical and physical separation of mechanisms for the regulation of interdependent cooperative activities from the mechanisms of controlling the various productive processes, be they processes of fabrication, transportation, etc. or processes of accounting, financial transactions, etc. That is, it affords the emergence of coordination technologies as a distinct class of technologies, separate from those of machine systems, as it is becoming technically and economically feasible for ordinary workers to construct and modify the control systems that mediate and regulate their cooperative activities.
The concept of the distinct control mechanism is again crucial. In coordination technologies such as workflow systems, scheduling systems, etc., the computational protocols regulating the coordination of interdependent activities are—can be, or rather: should be—technically separate from the procedures of the ‘first order’ machine systems (calculating aircraft vectors or passenger lists, controlling production machinery, etc.). It is therefore technically feasible to modify the computational coordinative protocols at very low costs. In other words, interactive computing technologies make it technically and economically feasible even for ordinary workers to devise, adapt, modify the computational protocols of their coordinative practices.
Like the town hall clock, the computational artifact does not cause practitioners to behave in a certain way. Just like the medieval townspeople might let their activities guide by the hands of the clock, or by the sound of its bell, workers today may let computational artifacts guide their interactions. Or, like the medieval townspeople, workers may disregard the presumptive mechanically issued command and decide that they have reasons—valid reasons—not to act on the signals produced by the artifact.
Again, the problem is not conceptual; it is not principled; it is practical. The challenge is to devise technologies that allow ordinary workers to construct and modify computational artifacts for regulating their coordinative practices and to do so with minimal effort. To do this, however, requires that we understand how ordinary coordinative artifacts are being constructed, negotiated, adopted, amended, combined and recombined. Is there a pattern, a logic even, to the way they are constructed, put together, combined and recombined, and so on? To address those questions systematically requires that we overcome our intellectual paralysis.
Cooperative Work and Coordinative Practices: Contributions to the Conceptual Foundations of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Page 412