Although technology is often viewed as value-free, an anthropological perspective
suggests that technological tools embody values and assumptions of their builders.
Drawing upon extended field research, this article investigates the construction of work
in the expert systems community of artificial intelligence (AI). Describing systematic
deletions in practitioners' representations of their own work, the article relates these to
both the selectivity of conventional knowledge acquisition procedures and the tendency
of expert systems to (in the practitioners' words) "fall off the knowledge cliff." Although
system builders see the latter problem as purely technical, this article suggests that it is
also the result of nontechnical factors, including the system builders' own tacit assump
tions. This article supports the view that technology has a cultural dimension.
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