[Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA

[Peg Griffin]

Mike, do you recall the juxtaposed triangles we used when we were analyzing Alejandro and Benny's reading with an adult? 
Here's how I recall it:
Each figure had two incomplete equilateral triangles sharing a baseline, one with the apex up and the other with the apex down. The whole came out kind of like a diamond shape but, on the right side of the page, it was the sides didn't meet -- leaving the future open.
The author, the teacher and the child put in what they could but where it went no-one could know... 

Another tidbit for the stone soup of ideas:  you wrote "a difference that does not make a difference" -- briding form linguistics terminology we might call it "allo-meanings"  (see allophones as the model).
Peg

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces+peg.griffin=att.net@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 10:51 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA

Alfredo

Might it be that words are NEVER enough? That all comprehension of another's words require imagination? Its just that sometimes the gap to be filled falls within a kind of normative range that is a difference that does NOT make a difference, while others require sufficient discontinuity to require intentional/conscious effort to bridge in a *satisficing* way.

mike

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 7:44 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> Huw,
> thanks for the reflection, it brings a very interesting distinction. 
> The software developers case that I mentioned is more on the contained 
> sense of "unknown", as you mentioned, not involving a shift of computing paradigm.
> Yet I could observe lots of work performed by the developers for them 
> to be able to do intelligible enough reference to the feature thereby 
> being designed. This work, which I glossed as "naming", included not 
> just (technical, specialized) names already familiar to them, but also 
> drawings, gesturing, and performance. So, the words were not enough, 
> and there was some form of imagination going on. So the distinction 
> you introduced makes me wonder how the situated work taking place 
> during a shift of
> (computational) paradigm would differ with respect to the one that I 
> am observing, that is, involving only a "minor" innovation.
>
> Henry's connection with the moving from verb to noun that we reported 
> with respect to boundary objects is interesting here because it brings 
> attention to objects (materials) and their relation to our 
> sensitivities (bodies). I am thinking if this connection might be of 
> help to understand the differences between the work that minor 
> innovations involve and the work of producing major paradigm shifts. 
> Perhaps, more than a shift in the kind of situated social interactions 
> that we observe, we should (again) attend to Latour's discussion on 
> inter-objectivity, and see how the material-historical arrangements in 
> the setting set the conditions for those shifts to occur. At the level 
> of interaction, I can imagine (!) that both going through a minor 
> innovation and going through a major shift involve some movement from 
> not being aware of a possibility to orienting towards that very 
> possibility. Studying differences there would be interesting. But I 
> guess that the key lies in the prior historical conditions for the 
> innovation/shift to emerge. Imagination may, in this account, be a 
> form of perceiving things that, to be so perceived, need to lend 
> themselves to those perceptions and apprehensions. If imagination 
> takes place first as performative work, and not as mental operation 
> alone, it needs to rely upon the possibilities of manipulation that 
> the materials offer. And those possibilities, of course, include possibilities of naming, of using words.
>
> Alfredo
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of 
> HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> Sent: 14 October 2015 01:38
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA
>
> Do I recall (and understand) correctly Alfredo’s and Rod’s article (on 
> boundary objects and building museum spaces) that gesture preceded naming?
> I mean that the boundary object started as collaborative/coordinated 
> movement. It was a perfomance before it was a thing that could be 
> named. A verb before it was a noun. And does this have anything to do 
> with Huw’s conjecture about a continuum of kinds of projects, at one 
> end those that replicate (with minimal creativity) and, at the other,  
> those that “get outside the box”? Academic discourse tends to be very 
> nouny, Latinate, loaded with bound morphemes. Such discourse serves 
> important purposes when operating on the generalization and 
> abstraction side of things, amongst the experts. But boundary objects 
> (as observed by Alfredo and Rod) assume the project members are 
> strangers to one another’s way of generalizing and abstracting. Could 
> gesture then be “rising to the concrete” in discourse generally? That would provide nice praxis.
>
> Respectfully,
> Henry
>
> > On Oct 13, 2015, at 4:45 PM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Alfredo,
> >
> > I suspect the quality of the unknown thing here would need qualification.
> > Experienced practitioners in software are often dealing with
> to-be-designed
> > artefacts, although these mostly fall into a more minor category of
> things
> > conforming to well-known conceptions or abstractions, hence they are 
> > usually only unknown in a rather contained sense (a bit like roughly 
> > knowing what kind of model you need to build out of lego).
> >
> > Contrary to this, computing problems entailing a new computational
> paradigm
> > would certainly throw such programmers into a genuine unknown (the
> dawning
> > realisation that one is working with a different kind of kit).  
> > Also,
> with
> > respect to requirements, the real unknowns are usually the soft 
> > requirements on agreeing what the problem is in the first place, 
> > which
> will
> > be largely governed by the social situation of said programmers, i.e.
> being
> > paid to get something built.
> >
> > Naming is very important in software in order to try to communicate 
> > functional intent, hence practitioners would no doubt be comfortable 
> > establishing agreement about naming before moving on.  Nonetheless 
> > you
> may
> > well be identifying some form of design mediation at play too.
> >
> > Best,
> > Huw
> >
> > On 13 October 2015 at 23:08, Alfredo Jornet Gil 
> > <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Henry, all,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I am at this moment going through a video database on design work 
> >> in a software development company, and, observing a discussion 
> >> between two developers who talk about features of the software that 
> >> are not yet developed, but which could be, ??the insight came upon 
> >> me that, to
> possibly
> >> create anything together (and there is no other way to do it since 
> >> one alone has not the tools/competence to do it), they had to name 
> >> it. So,
> the
> >> developers were talking about something that does not yet exist but
> which
> >> nonetheless needs to be referred to in order for them to even begin
> working
> >> on it. And naming something that does not yet exits does not happen 
> >> immediately, because they do not have a name for it. Naming it 
> >> takes
> time
> >> and space, that is, work. So, I think the notion of "displacement" 
> >> that
> you
> >> mention, if it captures this work that talking does to the 
> >> imagining,
> very
> >> relevant to what I am witnessing in my data. And, given the 
> >> salience of "place making" in the thread, the term "disPLACEment" 
> >> may be timely
> here.
> >>
> >>
> >> Alfredo
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> >> Sent: 13 October 2015 23:34
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Cc: Alfredo Jornet Gil; Rolf Steier; Geoffrey C. Bowker
> >> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA
> >>
> >> Mike,
> >> In your original post on Oct 10, you  suggested that we might 
> >> "...come
> up
> >> with a deeper understanding of the interlocking issues involved". 
> >> As you say, each chatter will have their own response to that. Mine 
> >> is that I
> can
> >> relate the three issues to displacement, which is arguably the most 
> >> important property of language as a semiotic system. It is the 
> >> ability
> of
> >> with language to refer to and construe aspects of the world removed 
> >> in
> time
> >> and place (from the here and now) and to the "make believe"
> ("irrealis").
> >> I was reminded of this on re-reading an article by Bruno Latour on 
> >> Interobjectivity that Greg Thompson posted back on Aug 18. Most 
> >> people,
> if
> >> asked, think of language primarily as something for communication.
> Animals
> >> communicate, but, as far as we know, do not displace. (Though It 
> >> might
> be
> >> argued that animals do a better job of communicating than people.!) 
> >> I
> would
> >> like to emphasize the importance of the temporal domain, as well as 
> >> the spatial, with displacement.
> >>
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>
>
>
>
>


-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an object that creates history. Ernst Boesch