I agree very much. The article that Geof Bowker and myself wrote in Mind,
Culture and Activity deals with these issues of temporality, specifically
technical mediation by classification schemes
in the case of tuberculosis and identity. I want to think more closely
about heterochrony and development, that seems right. It seems that it can
be an inhibiting or positive influence, depending on degree of "gap".
L*
>
> I can't judge the Einstein ideas since I know them too poorly,
>but I am very sympathetic to the idea that cultural mediation, e.g.,
>mediation through material/ideal artifacts, changes/constructs
>temporality in human life. I was blown away when I encountered Leslie
>White's idea that owing to cultural mediation, humans experience time
>as extending from infinitity to infinity "in either direction."
>
>I believe that the heterochrony brought about by cultural mediation
>is really central to development and I think this is the main message
>of Ana's note (at least, it was one I read into it!).
>
>Thanks to everyone who has chipped in with refs on computers and classroom
>cultures. Really helpful. Chapter promised in the great by and by when
>it written up (he says, planning to leave the country!).
>mike
***************************************
Susan Leigh Star
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois 123 LIS Building
501 East Daniel St.
Champaign, IL 61820 Phone: (217) 244-3280
FAX: (217) 244-3302 email: s-star1 who-is-at uiuc.edu
____________________________________________________
NOTE: PLEASE CHANGE MY EMAIL ADDRESS TO s-star1 who-is-at uiuc.edu. Soon
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"Scholarship is a choice of how to live as well as a choice of career....As
a social scientist, you have to...capture what you experience and sort it
out; only in this way can you hope to use it to guide and test your
reflection, and in the process shape yourself...but how can you do this?
One answer is: you must set up a file....." -- C. Wright Mills, "On
Intellectual Craftsmanship"