🚀 go-pugleaf

I've been looking at this issue with an eye to implementing some groupware
systems.  One of the things I've been finding in talking with potential
users is that people really resent having something authoritarian-seeming
made explicit in the computer, even when they deal with it in real life.

For example, Subject 2 was observed to have this interaction:

	Subject 2: "What are we doing about the XXX contract?"
	Peer:  "I've set up a meeting at 2.  You'll get the agenda as soon
		as the secretary finishes typing it up."
	Subject 2: "OK."

However, Subject 2 explicitly rejected the idea of having an electronic
calendar system which would allow his Peer to schedule this meeting
automatically, with him being able to remove it if he didn't like it.  That,
he said, was "too authoritarian."

Upon having it pointed out that the computer would simply be implementing
the now-informal procedure, Subject 2 ventured the opinion that "having the
interaction on the computer [made] it more authoritarian."

Comments?

--
--Alan Wexelblat
Bull Worldwide Information Systems	internet: wex@pws.bull.com
phone: (508) 294-7485 (new #)		Usenet: spdcc.com!know!wex
"The first myth of management is that it exists.  The second myth
of management is that sucess equals skill."