This book is about virtual individuals and virtual groups. It is also about a specific set of computer system applications – groupware and other network-based systems – and the way we employ them in construction, dissemination, and manipulation of these virtual entities. To an increasing extent, management in organizational contexts has become the management of virtual individuals and groups. These virtual entities are employed in establishing the patterns and setting the standards by which we are evaluated and with which we often must conform.

Virtuality has become a common theme in American life, taking on connotations of the “imaginary,” as well as the “designed” or “engineered”: “virtual corporations” are created when corporations design sets of linkages with each other and with critical environmental factors, thus extending their effective spheres of influence (Davidow and Malone, 1992). Instead of tales about lonely teens and their imaginary companions, stories about an engineered “virtual girl” are consumed in the mass market (Thomson, 1993).

A virtual individual is a selection or compilation of various traces, records, imprints, photographs, profiles, and statistical information that pertain (or could reasonably be said to pertain) to an individual – along with writing done, images produced, sounds associated with, and impressions managed by the individual. The amalgam that results (whatever its components) is associated with the individual in the context of particular genres and artifacts.

What can “privacy,” “anonymity,” or “agency” mean for members of a collaborative workgroup? The presumption that groups are supposed to work together in harmony and close contact may seem to exclude the need for private spaces, the opportunity to make an anonymous contribution, or the capacity to have one's work done by an agent or surrogate. However, these cultural objects have served to shape CSCW and other network-based system applications.

Privacy, anonymity, and agency in the realm of the societal construction of computing applications have a number of common denominators. Each has special associations within the group level: individuals’ expectations for privacy, or the meanings they attach to a statement delivered under the cloak of anonymity, are affected by whether or not they are working in a group or team context. Roles that agents play in computing applications are also sensitive to group context; for instance, groups may set standards for the kinds of activities in which they can be utilized.

These three cultural objects have also been topics of frequent discussion within computer application design communities. “Social analogues,” system features that are intentionally linked by developers to specific cultural objects, have been formulated for each of the three. The question of whether a social analogue will be successful in maintaining a strong linkage with a certain cultural object (beyond the association that designers have attempted to make) has a number of complex dimensions.

Genres are associated with various cultural objects, objects that can attract us to the genres, make us suspicious of them, or even avoid their use. Sites for constructing, expressing, and modifying cultural objects include debate, writing, speeches, legal decisions, imagery, and design, as well as CSCW and other network-based system applications. Construction of cultural objects, like that of artifacts and other physical objects, should be considered in light of its reflexive dimensions. The objects serve to shape the cultures, individuals, and genres that are associated with them, and in turn are given shape.

Issues of dependence, autonomy, and intellectual augmentation are critical aspects of construction of the “first-person plural” – which involves the authority to attach the word “we” to a document, product, or decision. This authority is not automatically given by group members, and is often not recognized by parties outside the group. In some situations, establishment of this authority may depend on the ability of group participants and audiences to segregate the group from the “computer-mediated group.”

“Collaboration” and “cooperation” among individuals – the harnessing of people's skills and talents to conduct projects, make decisions, and create new ideas – are notions that are both commonplace and elusive. The contradiction between the two epigraphs underscores the fact that controversies concerning the value of collaboration are not new. We have all participated in meetings and team projects, in informal exchanges as well as structured games, but these activities remain only vaguely understood and nearly impossible to predict and control with any precision. Our modes of individual and group expression (our “virtual individuals” and “virtual groups”) are intimately linked with the technologies that support group interaction – technologies that have undergone dramatic change in the past decades.

Network-based computer applications designed to support joint efforts (“computer-supported cooperative work,” or CSCW, applications) have both staunch supporters and fierce critics. Promoters have characterized these systems as “coaches” and “educators” (Winograd and Flores, 1986); critics, in turn, have labeled the same systems as “oppressors” and “masters” with a “digitized whip” (Dvorak and Seymour, 1988). The terms “groupware” and “workgroup computing” can be found in many computing, management, and social science publications, along with words of high praise, condemnation, or ennui. Virtual reality (VR) applications have been incorporated into some CSCW initiatives, sometimes compounding confusion about the systems and further steepening the learning curve.

Picture a modern office setting, perhaps an insurance company headquarters. Some people are writing on sheets of paper. Others are looking into computer screens, entering numbers into a spreadsheet. Still others are conversing. Which of these individuals are working individually, and which are engaging in cooperative work? And which of the individuals engaging in cooperative activity are participating in healthy, well-working groups? Some of these issues might appear to be riddles or trick questions. Whether there are “riddles” (or linguistic puzzles) involved, the issue of how best to construe cooperative work activity is one of the most salient focal points of research and theory in CSCW applications.

In much the same manner as healthy and unhealthy forms of individual behavior have been constructed by social scientists, today's administrative theorists, network-based system developers, and CSCW researchers are attempting to construct notions of “functional” and “dysfunctional” collaborative behavior. Several of the theorists whose work is described in this chapter are attempting to segregate some kinds of work as “cooperative” and give them special forms of support. Others want to transform existing forms of work from their current, supposedly noncooperative form into cooperative work. Still others label all work as cooperative and want us to see work itself in a new light. Many have identified “right” ways of thinking about and engaging in cooperative activity, their conclusions bolstered with theoretical scaffolding, empirical research, and appeals to common sense.

In building a design approach for computing applications that is responsive to their social and ethical dimensions, Pye's remarks are certainly instructive. He counsels us that all designs are in some senses compromises, and are therefore “failures.” Schwartz's comment prods us to look for new dimensions and possibilities in design, as well as to develop new ways of seeing media – not just new ways of applying new media to old problems. We tend to view new technologies with standards and expectations formed in previous eras: it is indeed difficult to do otherwise. The upshot of Pye's and Schwartz's counseling, simply put, is that computing applications and network-based system approaches in particular are likely candidates for revision, rethinking, and revision again.

I develop the notion of “genre-responsive design” in this chapter, along with some specific considerations for designers, managers, and users. Genres reflect complex political, social, and economic interactions among the individuals and groups with which they are associated. Couplings that genres have with various cultural objects serve to shape users’ expectations of those genres, as well as affect the scope of the genres’ utilization for constructing virtual individuals and groups.

The word “genre” (originally from French, meaning “type”) is largely associated with the realm of literature. In that context it is usually employed to refer to generic varieties of written material, such as novels, poems, and short stories. Viewing a set of computer applications as a genre emphasizes commonalities and family resemblances among set members (although genres can occasionally include loosely knit, heterogeneous compilations, held together for reasons that are largely accidental and historical). Questions about the range of expression that genres afford, and of individuals’ rationales in their choices of genres, occupy the attention of many literary critics (for example, Banta, 1978; Todorov, 1990), media specialists, and active as well as prospective consumers of the genres.

Discourse on genre plays an important role in genre construction. Genre-related notions can be powerful tools for understanding a variety of phenomena associated with human expression. The document you have in your hands right now conforms to a certain set of standards for presentation. Some are set by the American Psychological Society (APA), whosePublication Manual is the generally accepted style book for many written works. Writing standards may seem arbitrary, a trivial nuisance one must put up with in one's journey toward self-expression and group expression. However, these standards serve considerable functions in the development and maintenance of academic disciplines. For example, the adherence to uniform standards of citation that the APA requires bolsters the prestige of psychology as both a profession and a research area, supporting the notion that authors are indeed building on the work of others and adding to the growing stock of knowledge of the discipline as a whole (Bazerman, 1987b).

We all have had experiences we labeled as successful – perhaps even joyful – workplace or educational collaborations, where joint effort was free-flowing and results obtained were far greater than those any individual could have produced alone. The goal of facilitating such interaction with computer networks raises a number of difficult questions. How do we establish adequate platforms for selfdevelopment and self-expression, while providing vehicles for support of productive and efficient collaboration? How do we counterbalance powerful managerial and technological strategies with safeguards for the rights of individuals in their associations? This book takes a first step toward answering these questions.

In Chapter 1, I introduce and develop the notions of the “virtual individual” and “virtual group,” and explore how these entities play critical roles in human expression and interpersonal relationships. In this chapter, I also provide background and analysis on the research and application areas of network-based systems, with emphasis on groupware or “computer-supported cooperative work” (CSCW) approaches and linkages of groupware to the Internet and other large-scale networks. Although groupware and other network-based applications are of relatively recent vintage, they have roots that reach far back into the histories of computing, as well as the social and managerial sciences. I consider these applications in light of their many dimensions, in part by developing the notions of “genre” and “narrative” in relation to the growing varieties of computer artifacts and forms of computer-mediated expression.

This book has its origins in conversations I had with André Fuhrmann at the meetings of the International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosphy of Science in Uppsala in 1991. These exchanges led to a joint essay (Fuhrmann and Levi, 1994) that discussed some peculiarities of conditional reasoning when induction is taken into consideration. One sin begets another and I began contemplating the writing of a long paper combining the version of Ramsey test conditionals I had already advocated with ideas on inductive inference I had discussed ever since I had published Gambling with Truth (Levi, 1967).

As a preliminary, however, it seemed desirable to spell out somewhat more elaborately than I had done before the view of Ramsey test conditionals I favor. At around the same time, John Collins and I started a reading group at Columbia that included as regular participants Markko Ahtisaari, Horacio Arlo Costa, John Danaher, Scott Shapiro, and, for a brief period when he was visiting Columbia, André Fuhrmann. John Collins had presented to the group his account of the structural differences between revision of belief as understood by Alchourrón, Gardenfors, and Makinson (1985) and revision by imaging in a sense parasitic on the possible-worlds semantics for conditionals pioneered by D. Lewis (1973). In the course of his presentations, Collins defended the view that imaging was best suited to characterizing suppositional reasoning whereas AGM revision is suited to changing beliefs. I had already argued (Levi, 1991) that the AGM formalism was inadequate as an account of rational belief change. And I was quite convinced that imaging was ill suited to capture suppositional reasoning – especially in applications to practical deliberations.

Supposing and Believing

Keeping a firm grip on the difference between fact and fiction entails much more than distinguishing between what is judged true, what is judged false, and what hangs in suspense. Any agent who has a clear “sense of reality” distinguishes between what he or she fully believes to be true and what he or she supposes to be true for the sake of the argument. But both what is fully believed and what is supposed furnish the basis for a tripartite distinction between what is judged true, what is judged false, or what hangs in suspense.

Given an agent's state of full belief at a given time, some propositions are judged possibly true because they are not ruled out by the state of full belief and others are judged impossible. In this epistemic sense of serious possibility, h is judged true relative to the agent's state of full belief K if and only if ∼h is not a serious possibility, h is judged false if and only if ∼h is judged true, and the question of the truth of h hangs in suspense if and only if both h and ∼h count as serious possibilities.

If a would-be investor is uncertain as to whether the government will propose an investment tax credit for long-term investments in U.S. firms, the uncertainty will have some relevance to the investor's conclusion as to how to make investments.