'Though this be madness, yet there is method in't'

Abstract The paper is a synthesis of the growing doubt and dissatisfaction felt by the authors about the direction that the study of ‘information systems’ (IS) seems to be taking. The first author has over 20 years' experience, as an information technology/IS academic, as a consultant, and as a co-author of a large and commercially successful software package. The second author is relatively new to the subject, but is working full-time in a commercial IS environment. His views reflect the real uncertainties felt by many practitioners who put current IS theory into practice. Together the two authors confront some of the many methodical features that the discipline considers self-evidently true, but which they have come to see as bizarre.