From Informal to Formal?

The chapter describes an empirical study of a sociotechnical community—as an extended part of an institution—with the aim of revealing its changing processes. One hypothesis is that structures of socio-technical communities evolve from being less defined and informal to being more formal structures supported by evolving social control mechanisms, regulations and rules. The focus is the new emerging forms of socio-technical relationships. It is argued that the more established a socio-technical system is on the societal level, the more regulations will be developed which are enforced first by surveillance and social sanctions, and finally by technical determination. This chapter illustrates how socio-technical networks evolve in this direction under certain conditions. Things are not what they seem, and appearances are certainly not the whole of the story. This need to look behind appearances in careful, detailed and systematic ways is, of course, the common inspiration of all scientific and investigative work. —Bob Anderson, 1997