I liked most of the discussion about individual activity. If I understood
Yrjö right the message was that the individual can not be understood
without understanding the activity systems the individual engages in; In
other words, that the individual is made possible as something emerging
from the societal. This also makes sense in a history of ideas perspective.
It was not before civilisation had made the individual possible that
thinkers as Rousseau started to complain about society corrupting the
individual.
I think that it makes sense to understand every thing people does as parts
of activity systems. And obviously it is very effective in solving the
problems of primary health care in Finland, or in explaining why the
"Postal Buddy" was a failure. However, the effectiveness of
"activity-systems-analysis" is strongly depending on manifest
discrepancies.
This makes me wonder if there are things that can not be seen from the
point of view of activity theory, but that are crucially important for
understanding and supporting the development of working life and design of
new technology.
Perhaps it is insufficient to understand human creation of "the new" as
mere reaction to discrepancies, I think that it is a basic characteristic
of modern life that people participate in activities in ways that transcend
these activities; most obviously in art. Then we can ask if activity theory
is able to say anything interesting about art; I fear the answer is, it
isn't; just in the same way as biology isn't able to say much about mental
processes.
The question is if other kinds of theories are needed to understand
"creativity" and individuality as expressed in art, design, and innovation.
Maybe we just can't understand these things from a scientific point of view
-- we may have to agree with Card, Moran and Newell that: "Scientific
models do not eliminate the design problem, but only help the designer
control the different aspects". I hope we can get more from science.
I'll stop before it gets too longwinded. Perhaps I have just missed
something in the literature. After all I'm only a computer scientist. :-)
/olav
olav bertelsen, comp.sci.dept., aarhus university, denmark
olavb who-is-at daimi.aau.dk, phone +45 89 42 32 81
www: http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~olavb/