http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/11/05/on-filmmaking-and-software-development-part-2/#comment-17541

Another take on the distinction between dramatism and scientism is the distinction between LEXIS and PRAXIS. This may be trivially reduced to the distinction between “word” and “deed;” but I prefer to think of it as a distinction between the noun-based and the verb-based (which lines up nicely with Burke’s concern for grammatical issues). As John Seely Brown has pointed out, a business process is an ABSTRACTION of work practices; and the heart of the abstraction is a REDUCTION OF VERBS TO NOUNS. Enterprise software has perpetuated (aggravated) this abstraction with representations based entirely on OBJECTS and ATTRIBUTES; and to call this an impoverished representation of motivated actions (which is where praxis is recognized) involves a degree of politeness and generosity that I fear I lack.

Last week I was reading (for the second time) the Preface that Newton Gaver wrote for SPEECH AND PHENOMENA, a collection of Derrida essays translated into English. I liked the way Gaver talked about the transition that took Wittgenstein from his early (TRACTATUS) work to his later (PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS) period. He described Wittgenstein as turning “from making demands to making observations.” Do any of us NOT know some prominent IT authority who built a career around making demands and never acknowledged the value of making observations? Put another way (but to again resort to litotes) one would have to be blind to ignore the role of motivated action if one commits oneself seriously to making observations. Meanwhile, I invite anyone interested in honoring praxis as much as lexis to check out my entry at:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Mff23hgidqmHGqbcv.lfskakEtS6qLVHUEMFUG4-?cq=1&p=35

Yes, why is it, the bigger the company with the most money cannot perform as well service wise.

Here’s an extract from his article: “Applications that define entire business processes, such as CRM and SCM—as well as technologies, such as electronic data interchange, that automate communications between companies—fall into this category.”