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Noting that communication technologies are built by human beings rather than constituting naturally occurring features of the environment, we argue that social researchers should become involved in the process of design and adopt an orientation toward inquiry based on the concept of phronesis. Phronesis focuses on questions of ethics and deliberation over values for the purpose of determining how to act in the future. We illustrate how such inquiry might take place in the context of designing a community information system. More specifically, we discuss two theoretical positions consistent with a phronetic approach that have guided our work and the way that they have effected changes in our understanding of purpose, users, system specifications, and our own service commitments and educational practices.

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Theoretical studies in scientific and technical communication have begun to explore what they call discourse communities in the sciences and engineering on grounds that these communities provide the norms and practices for communication in these fields. The theoretical literature on which these studies are based develops two views of what a discourse community might be, an institutional and a social view. The first of these views has been the more influential, but both views may and should be brought to the study and the pedagogy of scientific and technical communication.

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