It is common for studies on technologies to adopt a deterministic perspective, according to which technologies, seen as exogenous factors, decisively influence societies, affecting their actions. This approach can not adequately describe the complex process of production and use of technology, which is circular, recursive. This essay argues for the need of research on organizations and technology to adopt a different perspective, considering technology in its social context, not within nor outside, but as inseparable part of the social context. In this perspective the concepts of circularity and solidarity of technologies receive the necessary attention and make it easier to understand where the technology does not achieve the expected results, despite its technical potential. In this sense, patterns, -units of measure or set ways for performing a given activity -offer an important opportunity to exercise this proposed approach. Given that standards are answers to the coordination problem for activities involving multiple participants, to study the establishment of technological standards, seeking to identify the social factors that led to its development and adoption, and emphasizing the explanation of the structures built on these standards, can help to improve the understanding of important social phenomena, particularly in the field of organizational studies.

The Information Pyramid has been used in technical and academic texts for a long time. Its origin is still uncertain, and it is likely to remain so, but the structure established by Russell Ackoff in 1989 has been the basis for most of the representations found in articles and books. This pyramid has been the subject of criticism from several authors in different research fields. In this theoretical essay, some of the pyramid's development trails are retrieved. Different expressions of the pyramid are discussed, comparing and contrasting its elements, assumptions and implications, in search of a more comprehensive understanding of these elements and their intertwining. To make the exposure more fluid, the reviews were grouped into categories; these, however, should not be taken in isolation, since the focus of attention is the representation, its premises and its implications. It is concluded that the hierarchical representations of the relationships between data, information, knowledge and others are unable to adequately represent, even in a simplified way, the complex processes it intends to subsume. However, it is considered that this representation can still be an instrument of learning, since used critically, supporting discussions about the complexity and circularity of the phenomena that this representation expresses.

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