[Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA

[mike cole]

Alfredo

Might it be that words are NEVER enough? That all comprehension of
another's words require imagination? Its just that sometimes the gap to be
filled falls within
a kind of normative range that is a difference that does NOT make a
difference, while others require sufficient discontinuity to require
intentional/conscious effort to bridge in a *satisficing* way.

mike

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 7:44 AM, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
wrote:

> Huw,
> thanks for the reflection, it brings a very interesting distinction. The
> software developers case that I mentioned is more on the contained sense of
> "unknown", as you mentioned, not involving a shift of computing paradigm.
> Yet I could observe lots of work performed by the developers for them to be
> able to do intelligible enough reference to the feature thereby being
> designed. This work, which I glossed as "naming", included not just
> (technical, specialized) names already familiar to them, but also drawings,
> gesturing, and performance. So, the words were not enough, and there was
> some form of imagination going on. So the distinction you introduced makes
> me wonder how the situated work taking place during a shift of
> (computational) paradigm would differ with respect to the one that I am
> observing, that is, involving only a "minor" innovation.
>
> Henry's connection with the moving from verb to noun that we reported with
> respect to boundary objects is interesting here because it brings attention
> to objects (materials) and their relation to our sensitivities (bodies). I
> am thinking if this connection might be of help to understand the
> differences between the work that minor innovations involve and the work of
> producing major paradigm shifts. Perhaps, more than a shift in the kind of
> situated social interactions that we observe, we should (again) attend to
> Latour's discussion on inter-objectivity, and see how the
> material-historical arrangements in the setting set the conditions for
> those shifts to occur. At the level of interaction, I can imagine (!) that
> both going through a minor innovation and going through a major shift
> involve some movement from not being aware of a possibility to orienting
> towards that very possibility. Studying differences there would be
> interesting. But I guess that the key lies in the prior historical
> conditions for the innovation/shift to emerge. Imagination may, in this
> account, be a form of perceiving things that, to be so perceived, need to
> lend themselves to those perceptions and apprehensions. If imagination
> takes place first as performative work, and not as mental operation alone,
> it needs to rely upon the possibilities of manipulation that the materials
> offer. And those possibilities, of course, include possibilities of naming,
> of using words.
>
> Alfredo
> ________________________________________
> From: xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu
> <xmca-l-bounces+a.g.jornet=iped.uio.no@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of
> HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> Sent: 14 October 2015 01:38
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA
>
> Do I recall (and understand) correctly Alfredo’s and Rod’s article (on
> boundary objects and building museum spaces) that gesture preceded naming?
> I mean that the boundary object started as collaborative/coordinated
> movement. It was a perfomance before it was a thing that could be named. A
> verb before it was a noun. And does this have anything to do with Huw’s
> conjecture about a continuum of kinds of projects, at one end those that
> replicate (with minimal creativity) and, at the other,  those that “get
> outside the box”? Academic discourse tends to be very nouny, Latinate,
> loaded with bound morphemes. Such discourse serves important purposes when
> operating on the generalization and abstraction side of things, amongst the
> experts. But boundary objects (as observed by Alfredo and Rod) assume the
> project members are strangers to one another’s way of generalizing and
> abstracting. Could gesture then be “rising to the concrete” in discourse
> generally? That would provide nice praxis.
>
> Respectfully,
> Henry
>
> > On Oct 13, 2015, at 4:45 PM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Alfredo,
> >
> > I suspect the quality of the unknown thing here would need qualification.
> > Experienced practitioners in software are often dealing with
> to-be-designed
> > artefacts, although these mostly fall into a more minor category of
> things
> > conforming to well-known conceptions or abstractions, hence they are
> > usually only unknown in a rather contained sense (a bit like roughly
> > knowing what kind of model you need to build out of lego).
> >
> > Contrary to this, computing problems entailing a new computational
> paradigm
> > would certainly throw such programmers into a genuine unknown (the
> dawning
> > realisation that one is working with a different kind of kit).  Also,
> with
> > respect to requirements, the real unknowns are usually the soft
> > requirements on agreeing what the problem is in the first place, which
> will
> > be largely governed by the social situation of said programmers, i.e.
> being
> > paid to get something built.
> >
> > Naming is very important in software in order to try to communicate
> > functional intent, hence practitioners would no doubt be comfortable
> > establishing agreement about naming before moving on.  Nonetheless you
> may
> > well be identifying some form of design mediation at play too.
> >
> > Best,
> > Huw
> >
> > On 13 October 2015 at 23:08, Alfredo Jornet Gil <a.j.gil@iped.uio.no>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Henry, all,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I am at this moment going through a video database on design work in a
> >> software development company, and, observing a discussion between two
> >> developers who talk about features of the software that are not yet
> >> developed, but which could be, ??the insight came upon me that, to
> possibly
> >> create anything together (and there is no other way to do it since one
> >> alone has not the tools/competence to do it), they had to name it. So,
> the
> >> developers were talking about something that does not yet exist but
> which
> >> nonetheless needs to be referred to in order for them to even begin
> working
> >> on it. And naming something that does not yet exits does not happen
> >> immediately, because they do not have a name for it. Naming it takes
> time
> >> and space, that is, work. So, I think the notion of "displacement" that
> you
> >> mention, if it captures this work that talking does to the imagining,
> very
> >> relevant to what I am witnessing in my data. And, given the salience of
> >> "place making" in the thread, the term "disPLACEment" may be timely
> here.
> >>
> >>
> >> Alfredo
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
> >> Sent: 13 October 2015 23:34
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Cc: Alfredo Jornet Gil; Rolf Steier; Geoffrey C. Bowker
> >> Subject: Re: [Xmca-l] Re: Reflective Discourse on XMCA
> >>
> >> Mike,
> >> In your original post on Oct 10, you  suggested that we might "...come
> up
> >> with a deeper understanding of the interlocking issues involved". As you
> >> say, each chatter will have their own response to that. Mine is that I
> can
> >> relate the three issues to displacement, which is arguably the most
> >> important property of language as a semiotic system. It is the ability
> of
> >> with language to refer to and construe aspects of the world removed in
> time
> >> and place (from the here and now) and to the "make believe"
> ("irrealis").
> >> I was reminded of this on re-reading an article by Bruno Latour on
> >> Interobjectivity that Greg Thompson posted back on Aug 18. Most people,
> if
> >> asked, think of language primarily as something for communication.
> Animals
> >> communicate, but, as far as we know, do not displace. (Though It might
> be
> >> argued that animals do a better job of communicating than people.!) I
> would
> >> like to emphasize the importance of the temporal domain, as well as the
> >> spatial, with displacement.
> >>
> >> Henry
> >>
> >>
>
>
>
>


-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch