Propositions ("Stellingen") PhD Dissertation Aldo de Moor

  1. Most virtual professional communities do not lack the intention to change, but the means.
  2. It is more important that specification changes of a network information system are legitimate, than that they are of the highest conceivable quality.
  3. "[C]ommunities work better if people come together to discuss their differences." (David Shenk, Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut, 1997, p.202)
  4. Openly discussing specification conflicts strengthens, instead of weakens, a virtual professional community.
  5. "[T]he old question 'Who shall be the rulers?' must be superseded by the more real one: 'How can we tame them?'" (Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Part 2, 1962, p.133).
  6. The similarity between the items of the American federal budget to be voted on by Congress, and the specifications produced by many current methods, is that both can often only be accepted or rejected wholesale.
  7. If Europe had applied the 'Not in My Backyard' principle to the wars in the Balkans with the same vigour as the average citizens group does in protesting against nearby environmental polluters, much suffering could have been prevented.
  8. "The only constant of the Internet is change." (Jill Ellsworth, IT-Monitor, August 1998).
  9. Many traditional system specification approaches can be compared to decision making practices in the European Union: both do not adequately involve the end users.
  10. Considering the misery the never-ending new releases of software applications inflict upon their users, it would be better to talk about 'unleashing' instead of 'releasing' a new version of a program.
  11. Taking into account the vast number of pens that disappear into absolute nothingness in the average university, astronomers would probably learn more about black holes by observing their department than by studying the cosmos.
Last updated: April 16, 2007