Ed Hutchins said:
>The cognitive artifact concept points not so much to a category of
>objects, as to a category of processes that produce cognitive effects
>by bringing functional skills into coordination with various kinds of
>structure.
What are the differences between categories of objects and categories of
processes? I don't understand how the process of "making artifacts" can be
anything other than a universal process for adapting to environments. If one
believes (as I do) what Hutchins relates:
> In this view, language becomes the ultimate cognitive artifact system, and
>cognitive artifacts are absolutely fundamental to human consciousness and
>what it means to be human.
then understanding the use or categorization of any artifact must occur in
reference to its "universality". This is not to say that history doesn't
warp or transform the artifact or system to serve parochial ends but it does
imply an underlying similariy that is useful for communication across
disciplines or even belief structures.
I also see artifact as the product (or compliment) of reification. So
reification is the verb and artifact the noun. But, what is it that serves
as the vehicle for reification? I subscribe to Wenger's view that
participation (or, activity in the bald sense - being -) is the core of the
total functioning that makes us what we are. I also see the notion of
refication as subsuming the idea of "representation" and perhaps being
ultimately understood as the whole that is implicit in the idea of the
affordance (which gets to the expanded view and defintion of "psychology" to
include the system within which the person exists).
So from this view it is wrong to say that reification is the result of
unique social, cultural, or historical forces (the artifacts spun off may be).
Chris Francovich