Performative, Informative and Emotive Systems The First Piece of the PIE

» This paper distinguishes computer and communications systems that'perform' fr om those that'inform' and those that deal with emotive aspects of problema It indicates some of the ways that peformative systems seem to differ from the other kinds, why this distinction is important to both users and designers, and suggests research-some of it currently underway-to investigate this area. Results from this research will allow us to improve existing performative systems and to expand the domain of their application. Introduction >There is a third way to use expressions, and that is to make » something happen. Some expressions-called per'Idn years ago many knowledgeable people began preformatives-by their mere utterance make things hapdicting the'paperless office.' During the past decade we > pen. Standard examples are "I'll meet you for lunch, have continued a technological revolution that has im'Riesday at one," and (from an umpire in a baseball proved imaging, transmission, and processing capabiligame) "You're out!" When I say I will meet you'Ihesday at one, I am not predicting that I will meet you, I am ties far beyond what we were even dreaming of then. Yet promising to meet you and in so doing am creating an we still have lots of paper in our offices. obligation for me to appear at lunch. Similarly, the Perhaps part of the reason is that much of our paper umpire is not (or not exclusively) describing a fact (that does more than i orm us. It has a role, condoned by yo u are out); instead, the umpire is declaring-making it many centuries of use and recognized in our legal and true that you are out Saying so (in that circumstance) makes it so. governmental systems as well, in pedorming functions. While we moved rather easily from paper to electronic informatio4 the move from paper to electronicpedonn>Expressions-whether mform ative, performative, emoance has not gone so easily. This paper proposes some tive or whatever-may be communicated in a variety of research that will help us to understand why. ways. We may speak, we may write, we may talk into the telephone, we may use electronic mail, we may have computers send non-textual messages forus, and soon. » Technology supports our utterances, and information Performatives systems technology is an important part of our utterance,-supporting infrastructure. Justas verbalutterances may ,We normally think of a communicated expression as be informative, performative, or emotive, soinformation conveying information, and when this occurs we may systemstechnologyneedsto supportallthreeaspectsof speak of the informative content of an expression. For our communications. But, the performative and emotive example, when someone says "Reagan beat Carter in aspects of communication have not been sufficiently the 1980 presidential election," this expression comunderstood or attended to by information systems remunicates a certain fact, and we may speak of the exsearch. It is our purpose, in what follows, to begin a > pression as being either true or false. The statement systematic discussion of performative expressions in :made by the expression is its informative content But information systems. We leave to later consideration the there are other uses of language, other ways we may use questions associated with emotive aspects. > our expressions. In exclaiming "Help!" for instance, we r display an emotion-distress. So, expressions may have -In this paper we shall see that performatives are quite emotive content in addition to informative content common, even essential in business and that information lin the Orient this is sometimes called a "chop." and it consists of a carefully carved stamp containing a person's name or an organization's symboL