Silence Inside Systems: Roots and Generativity Consequences

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Tiwana, Amrit; Safadi, Hani
• 署名单位: University System of Georgia; University of Georgia
• 刊物名称: INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7047; 1526-5536
• DOI: 10.1287/isre.2022.0586
• 发表日期: 2026-03
• 关键词: attention; silence; chattiness; evolutionary dynamics; IS generativity; IT evolution; loose coupling; architecture; quietness; supercomputing methods; Miles Davis; Moore's law; Shikantaza; trace data; system behavior; INFORMATION; attention

摘要

Silence as a system behavior has evaded attention in information systems (IS) discourse, where interaction predominates. It merits examination as systems grow brittle, brute-force countermeasures falter, and autonomous systems risk misbehaving. We conceptualize silence as dynamic system-wide behavior, theorizing how it drives IS generativity by coalescing developers' attention on temporally shifting slivers of a system's codebase. Using a supercomputer-scale model, we analyzed nearly 20 million tweaks over a quarter of a century in over a thousand systems, constructing 67,000+ evolving humanto-artifact networks to infer such behavioral dynamics. We show that silence breeds generativity by dynamically funneling developers' attention. We make three contributions. First, we introduce silence as a dynamic system-wide behavior rooted in system architecture. Second, we show silence's generativity consequences-halving degenerativity, doubling evolution speed, quadrupling releases, and spawning 600 times as many forks. Third, we uncover attention funneling as the mechanism linking silence to generativity.