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1.1. what did you find interesting about the article? It was the most realistic assessment of working from home that I've seen. Most things I've read are very positive about working from home without even assessing the hassles and drawbacks. 1.2. what did you find not interesting about the article? Nothing. 2. what do you consider the main message of the article? When assessing the real value of working from home, one must take into account the frailty of technology, the requirements of jobs beyond information handling, the importance of the office social system in sharing the burdens of certain tasks, and the hidden finanical costs of technology/ 3. what does the following quote mean to you: "design needs to attend not simply to the frailty of technological systems and the robustness of social systems, but to ways in which social systems often play a key part in making even frail technology robust" 3.1. why are social systems robust? There are many people in a social system with different skills and experience that contribute and share the burden of tasks. The social system is not dependent on one person; when a person leaves the system, he/she can be replaced. 3.2. why are technological system frail? Computers crash, networks go down, software has bugs, etc. Basically, the more complex technology becomes, the more ways in which it can break. 3.3. or do you disagree with the authors about this? No, I basically agree with the authors' arguments. 4. think of a couple of persons (maybe family members or friends) who are in a position to use computer by being "home alone"! Characterize the major problems that these persons have! My husband works from home as a software developer. One of the major problems he has is with his operating system environment. He tries to install something or set up something and it won't work because his operating system has some strange path or variable. It can be very frustrating for him. 5. Describe briefly some new innovative technologies that you can think of which would address these problems! None that I know. 6.1. in case of problems with computer systems, how often to you look for help/advice from humans? Constantly. At work, I'm surrounded by other engineers who are more knowledgeable than I am so I usually ask for help when I can't figure something out. It's much faster. 6.2. in case of problems with computer systems, how often to you look for help/advice from written documentation? Not so often. 6.3. in case of problems with computer systems, how often to you look for help/advice from online resources? Frequently. For programming, I will look at documentation alot, especially java documentation which is very easy to search and is the definitive source for java programmers. |
