Why can’t a Role be a computer or a database?
Work is a social activity. Humans may create technologies that mechanize certain tasks, but machines do not make their own decisions about which activities they engage in. Only people make those decisions, determining what activities and transactions are important, and assigning the tasks either to real people, or technology enablers such as applications that can complete the tasks. But don’t applications sometimes take the place of humans to play Roles? Yes, they can and do. As technologies become more sophisticated a software program may well be capable of filling a Role. An example might be using an online reservations program to book airline travel. In that case the technology supports fulfillment tasks by acting in the Role of “travel agent” or “reservation service provider.” So even though a software program is capable of filling that Role it is fulfilling it based on the way a real human would typically behave in that Role. The technology is merely a mechanism for a Role to be e
