Informating

The collaborative, distributed, multimodal hypermedia system envisioned by the Boeing engineers represents a use of technology that Shoshana Zuboff has called "informating" (1988). Informating strategies emerge as industries move beyond an emphasis on productive efficiency, where "automating" strategies predominate, to an emphasis on innovation and competitive advantage in which manipulation of information (texts) can be as important as the production of material goods.

Automating technologies seek to extract productive value (skill, technique, strength) from human bodies and invest them in machines, making human labor superfluous. Informating technologies -- for example electronic mail and bulletin boards, telecommunications networks, distributed hypertexts Ñ also extract or externalize workers' activity (planning and discussion, for instance) but they do not seek to replace workers; rather in Bush's or Engelbart's sense they are meant to expand or augment a worker's performance.

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