Do only computers scale? On the cognitive and social aspects of scalability
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Scalability has been for long time presented as a desirable property of a networked computer system associated to measure of its performance. As information and com-munication technologies (ICT) become ubiquitous, a need of describing scalability also from a human perspective has emerged. Indeed, technical scalability only describes the performance of a computer system, but it does not explain anything about its impact on cognitive and social performance. Without acknowledging that technical scalability does not imply human scalability, there is the risk of not realizing the full potential of ICT in the everyday life. By adopting the Socionics approach, we extend the technical view of scalability with two additional concepts, namely cognitive and social scalability. These concepts describe the capacity to process individually or collectively growing vol-umes of work gracefully, and/or to adjust to their increasing complexity. The notion of social scalability is then evaluated in the activity-context of social coordination through mobile devices. We conclude that by improving our understanding of scalability issues, we may positively inform the design and use of ICT not only from the viewpoint of technical performance, but also for that of individual and collective performance.
Author: Giuseppe Lugano
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3172070092