Re: levels of context

Luiz Ernesto Merkle (lmerkle who-is-at julian.uwo.ca)
Wed, 01 Sep 1999 13:44:10 -0500

Mike and Gienevieve,

A discussion of what comes 'first' already assumes that there is a
possible linear order ruling a particular cultural ecosystem, one that
is usually in accordance with concentric views. That is why I avoided
the term. However, from the way Mike paraphrase me, I did not succeed.

From the little that Genevieve's said, if tool use was on focus,
rather than tool making, the artifact ends up becoming determinant in
terms of the set of constraints that limit the activity. In this
sense, artifacts stream the 'user' activities, and that is why they
seem to have precedence over the context. If tool making were the
case, artifacts would be the last, because they would be the outcome
of the designer's cultural ecosystem processes, and not the income.

In either case, first or last, they only recognize the distinction of
'designers' from 'users', a distinction that is deeply rooted in the
cultural (di)vision of labor. The designers make, the users use. This
cultural segmentation is very visible in bookstores. I get amazed by
the overflowing quantity of "computers for dummies" type of book in
respect to the unquestioned absence of "culture and cognition for
nerds" possible equivalent.
The question is: is this (di)vison the one we want? I personally
don't. There are several approaches in HCI which partially break this
division, from what is called participatory design, passing through
situated and distributed cognition, and reaching CHAT. I can't extend
this now, but it is a point that deserve a more in-depth analysis.

The same kind of order is the one that rules context as "concentric
circles" mentioned by Mike. In criticizing this 'order' I usually
make reference to "the whole and the part" fallacy. Concentric
circles underlie the belief that either everything is decomposable
(Cartesian), or that there is more in the whole than the sum of its
parts. These two abstract hierarchies ground top down and bottom up
approaches in tool making.

In contraposition, the most important in a "context as - that which
weaves together" is not the static relationship between the "whole and
the part", which pictures a cultural ecosystem as complete and sound,
but the dynamic (historical) relationship between "the whole and the
MISSING part", which pictures a acultural ecosystem as always in
struggle, always in trasformation.

Luiz