I've appreciate your comments, and would like to know more about your
work.
When you said:
> Contextual constraints are first
> located in the tool (i.e., the computer imposes
> its limits), externalized in interaction with the
> user (mostly through frustrated user moves),
> internalized by that user (who recognizes and
> remembers these limits), and then externalized
> again if the user seeks assistance (e.g., when a
> user seeks to circumvent a given limit through
> consulting).
It reminded me of the dynamic relationship Pierre Bourdieu uses to
characterizes modalities of practices. I've been exploring the
outcomes of computing and information technology, artifacts, as also
mediators of relations of power situated witin a cultural ecosystem.
For me, cultural ecosystems are parallel to what Jay Lemke calls an
ecosocial systems.
In this sense I'm not sure if the constraints are "first" located in
the tool. For me they are already in place in the set of dispositions
(what Bourdieu calls habitues) that the participants interacting
through computers have are already in place. Just the fact that there
are "users" and "designers" already recognizes and sustains relations
of power between the two.
How can I have acess to the reference you mention? (Patthey, 1991, pp.
55-56)
Thanks,
Luiz
Luiz Ernesto Merkle
The University of Western Ontario
Middlesex College
Department of Computer Science
London, Ontario, N6A 5B7 Canada
+1 (519) 661 3515 fax
Email: merkle who-is-at csd.uwo.ca
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~merkle/