Technology should be useful.

This simple tenet someimes seems to have escaped the attention of software designers who release products that in the final analysis seem neither useful or usable.

In a recent article on knowledge management at CIO, Bonnie Nardi, an anthropologist working for Agilent, says that people often need to communicate with people in the organization who aren't connected to them by lines on an organizational chart. But too often, collaboration software creates barriers to the process rather than facilitating it.

Currently, collaboration, workflow and knowledge management applications are designed to manage knowledge, not support individual personal networks. But knowledge, like Soylent Green, is people and exchanging knowledge means making easy to get in touch and stay in touch.