Models and Theories in Human-Computer Interaction/Social translucence system and Knowledge Management as a Social Phenomenon

Social translucence system and Knowledge Management as a Social Phenomenon (CheeKang Tan)

The Computer mediated communication (CMC) is a process that human data interaction occurs through the use of two or more networked telecommunication systems. WikiBook itself is a great collaborative platform that helps knowledge management from a socially translucent perspective. WikiBook is one of the “Social translucent systems” that is in a designed digital system, which support coherent behavior by making participants and their activities visible to the public.

WikiBook is also a knowledge management that inputting useful information into databases, providing schemes for organizing, and retrieving information. It has becoming a popular social phenomenon. It helps organization self-conscious and enable themselves to tap their own experience in solving problems rather than going through reinvent solution for recurring problems. [1] The social translucence system leads people to think in terms of data mining, text clustering, databases and documents. [1]

However, this platform do not necessary motivates interaction that resembles a face-to-face context. A face to face context have more factors involved that may not be as efficient as WikiBook-collaborative platform in the perspective of knowledge management. The face to face context has the factors of visibility, awareness, and accountability. Visibility- the human faces, figures, movement and environment; Awareness – the awareness of social relationships and respect of vertical hierarchy; Accountability – Conservative in ideas, opinions, feelings about certain issues. For example, students who are silent in face-to-face communication, contribute more participation in CMC discussion.

Reference:

[1] THOMAS ERICKSON and WENDY A. KELLOGG, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Vol. 7, No. 1, March 2000, Pages 59–83. http://www.ics.uci.edu/~corps/phaseii/EricksonKellogg-SocialTranslucence-TOCHI.pdf