Culture, history, activity, models
Bill Barowy (wbarowy who-is-at mail.lesley.edu)
Mon, 15 Nov 1999 13:06:54 -0500
So much written over the weekend, and it links nicely to a paper I read
last night --An Activity-Theoretical Perspective on Producer-User
Interaction by Hasu with the requisite cultural-historical analysis. There
the analysis is on a brain measuring machine and there are some
contradictions between the two different systems of application -- and one
of the things not expanded on in detail, but in light of the recent
discussions could be, is that the timescales expected in research and
clinical medicine are different. But I'm not sure if doing so would help
as the different timescales of the systems seem to be emergent with their
other characteristics?
WRT cultural-historical analysis in activity theory, culture as a slice of
history is like the breadth of the depth?
There are other people who are concerned with phenomena interacting across
many timescales -- since the 80's NASA's 'mission to planet earth' project
has been developing an integrated model of the processes contributing to
global climate. I have a nice illustration from a dated document that is
a conceptual map of the processes with timescales of hours/days,
months/seasons, years, decades, and centuries. Something similar appears
at the following url
http://www.earth.nasa.gov/visions/stratplan/globeclim.html