Eva said,
"However, I'm not sure if the separation into three activity systems is
warranted. The mailinglist as a whole must certainly be considered as an
activity system -- if there hadn't been systemic coherence in the Xlist
activities they would not have lasted so long, and with a recognizable
culture. And what I wished to explore with analyzing the activity as three
cascading systems was the relations between what I see as the overarching
motive to jointly develop central issues in CHAT, and the necessary
preconditions for doing so in the distributed fashion of a mailinglist,
which do not pre-exist the multilogical activity but ALSO have to be
produced and produced again over the same channel. In the case of channel
maintenance we have seen several times during the past year how
multilogical activity is through and through dependent on people and things
(gremlins) not necessarily involved in developing central issues of CHAT."
And in the case of the CHAT community, the Xlists are quite obviously just
a part of the networks where newcomers are apprenticed and all CHAT
practicioners produce and exchange their goods. So my analysis is from a
perspective where Xlist multilogue -- generative semiosis on CHAT issues --
is in the center of my picture from the beginning."
Thanks for the clarification. Upon looking at the scheme of cascading
activities the earlier discussion of concentric circles came to mind. This
was partly because of the earlier reference to Barry Kort's three-layered
model which for me seemed very "developmental" or following a structured
history of levels. An approach where x-lists go through a stage by stage
progression where one activity system (communication technology)
development allows another system (community building) to emerge.
For me, this goes to the difficulty of schematically representing activity
systems where time and space are not clear cut. For example, looking at
activity settings as concentric circles (activity setting around artifact -
computer program) and what surrounds (5th D site) or that which weaves
together (two interconnected activity setting) are easier to schematically
represent (from the perspective on the consumer end) than those where time
and space are more complicated. On one hand, one does not want to give the
impression of three activity settings, but on the other hand there are
levels involved which connect the three "activity systems" (e.g. objects
becoming tools).
In recently reading, "When the center does not hold: The importance of
knotworking" by Engestrom, Engestrom, and Vahaaho in *Activity Theory and
Social Practice* it became apparent (at least for me) that the idea of
activity system being synonymous with context or site maybe too limiting.
In this sense, the activity settings were useful for me in seeing "that
which weaves together" how an object becomes a tool etc.
Nate