Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

147netOrganisationStefano Lotti, CEO BrainWorkers Ltd. and Angelo CanalettiPartner <strong>of</strong> BrainWorkers Ltd., Italy1. The Net as a biological phenomenonHere we intend to understand the Net from our human beings’ viewpoint 1 . It might seem onlyapparently trivial to say that those who use technological networks are biologically human beings.However we believe that starting from this ‘trivial’ point <strong>of</strong> view we can understand how do thetechnological networks and organisations work and, to a certain extent, we can therefore orient thedesigning <strong>of</strong> further tools not in a naïve fashion.It is impossible not to see that from the design <strong>of</strong> the first computers to nowadays the networksevolution has had an unforeseeable development. We cannot ignore that the current implementation<strong>of</strong> such a phenomenon like the Internet goes beyond its inventor’s original forecast and that thedescription <strong>of</strong> the networks in terms <strong>of</strong> protocols and codes characteristics is necessary but notsufficient to explain what is currently happening.Nevertheless, we believe that is equally insufficient to deal with the Net approaching it withtraditional, although accurate, sociological and organisational studies.What we need are intellectual tools and a language able to deal and understand technology as a part<strong>of</strong> our biological being, tools that can be an effective guide in order to design and implement theworld we are interested in.«Let us heap all science together. Before we reach the end <strong>of</strong> our tether» 22. The technological networkOver the recent decades we have passed from IT centred on ‘data elaboration’, to IT focused oncomputers connections. A picture <strong>of</strong> this change can be seen referring to the computer imagesover time, as observed by Carl Adam Petri 3 . In this synthesis we can see how the upcoming <strong>of</strong> thenetworks shifts the IT meaning from data calculation to communication possibilities.1 Much <strong>of</strong> the trust we here express comes from the observation <strong>of</strong> great number <strong>of</strong> organization, from great enterprise to informalgroups and in particular <strong>of</strong> a place such as CSOA Forte Prenestino, that with little technology, and by continuous attemps andby making mistakes, has been concretely experimenting a life organisation without old hierarchies and tries among thousandsdiffi culties and cultural and human barriers to put in place desirable forms <strong>of</strong> life.2 Angel Parra and Srafford Beer, Litany for a computer and baby about to be born, 1972 (cit. in Stafford Beer, Platform for change,John Wiley & Sons 1994).3 We quote the formulation Petri elaborated in 1977 as modifi ed by Giorgio De Michelis in, «Computer Supported CooperativeWork: I´informatica tra utente e complessità sociale», in A. Argido - G. Mazzoli, Le nuove tecnologie per la promozione umana.Usi dell´ínformatica fra macro e micro comunicazioni, FrancoAngeli, 1993.