acm-header
Sign In

Communications of the ACM

The profession of IT

Involvement and Detachment


art collage of male and female technology workers

Credit: Master1305; Andrij Borys Associates

Our age values abstraction, the characterization of large populations with statistics, properties, and rights. This is natural for governments, which are preoccupied with defining and dispensing services efficiently across large populations. Global connectivity enables data collection from everyone and distillation of trends in large groups, revealing large-scale phenomena that were not visible in prior times. For example, COVID is treated as a large-scale phenomenon of infection, hospitalization, and herd immunity through vaccination. In contrast, when the Spanish Flu epidemic began in 1918, there were no centers for disease control, no health oversight agencies, no daily communications about the spread of the disease, no ability to exercise large-scale controls. The ability to view large-scale phenomena through the lens of distilled data is strong force for abstraction. Unfortunately, abstraction is also a force for detachment, the loss of connection with fellow human beings.

In my work, I coach graduate students on their innovation projects. Many get stuck, unable to get their communities to engage with them. An invisible force seems to thwart them from achieving their innovation goals. This was puzzling because they seemed to be doing the right things: looking for concerns, crafting good envisioning stories, and making offers. Then I discovered a distinction that revealed the invisible force. It is the distinction between the moods of involvement and detachment.


 

No entries found

Log in to Read the Full Article

Sign In

Sign in using your ACM Web Account username and password to access premium content if you are an ACM member, Communications subscriber or Digital Library subscriber.

Need Access?

Please select one of the options below for access to premium content and features.

Create a Web Account

If you are already an ACM member, Communications subscriber, or Digital Library subscriber, please set up a web account to access premium content on this site.

Join the ACM

Become a member to take full advantage of ACM's outstanding computing information resources, networking opportunities, and other benefits.
  

Subscribe to Communications of the ACM Magazine

Get full access to 50+ years of CACM content and receive the print version of the magazine monthly.

Purchase the Article

Non-members can purchase this article or a copy of the magazine in which it appears.
Sign In for Full Access
» Forgot Password? » Create an ACM Web Account