Fast Company interviews Gartner researcher Tom Austin on why your head of IT should be a cultural anthropologist and why you should think twice before you block YouTube.
“A new species of Information Technologist is emerging from the primordial ooze of Web 2.0 — social scientists and humanists who focus on human behavior more than software code. So says Tom Austin, a researcher with Gartner, Inc., an information technology research and advisory firm. Austin believes that social sciences will become more important to IT Departments than IT itself. As computer systems become ever more automated and transparent, attention will shift to how to use these tools as social lubricants in the workplace. Here he explains why companies should worry less about blocking social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and more about using social networking to enhance collaboration and productivity.”
[...] focuses on “user experience, experience design, and person-centered innovation.” Here’s a good one on Tom Austin, an applied anthropologist, who argues that IT needs the social [...]