I am especially interested in the ideas on externalization/internalization
as it relates to what I am trying to understand about how people can learn
through scientific modeling and technologicial design. Both are processes
that result in the creation of (external) artifacts, but for different
purposes, which can be described later. Suffice it to say that the
externalization/internalization notion is useful for understanding some
learning.
There are several aspects of externalization/internalization which puzzle
me, however. Externalization/internalization requires the distinction
inside/outside the subject, does it not? Activity theory does place
artifact as separate from subject - yet Bateson sees these lines of
demarcation as 'across the pathways in which information or difference is
transmitted.' I think Bateson's idea of 'difference' here is related to
Jay's 'divergent externalizations' and also to the error signals of
cyberneticists and the cognitive dissonance of folks who study conceptual
change in individuals.
So I write to you in order to figure this stuff out for myself. Thinking
like an systems engineer then, if you don't mind:
Externalization/Internalization distinction enables one to analysize the
flow of information betwen subjects and objects - analagous to placing a
current meter between two devices of an electrical system to measure
current flow between them, while the devices together with the rest of the
circuits continue to co-constitute the electrical system. Indeed, even the
current meter becomes part of the system and perturbs it, however it may be
designed to minimize this. But we cannot penetrate what goes on inside the
separate electronic devices this way.
The distinction is useful for subject/artifact too - I can read Jay's or
Yrjo's externalizations, even though I cannot enter into their private
thoughts, nor can they mine. And as Cytowic claims, they know more then
they write, which quite impresses me. The distinction is partially
natural: they can walk away from their keyboards and disconnect me from
their ideas, or I can walk away from my computer screen and not read. We
can disable xmca entirely and choose not to externalize/internalize anymore
in this way.
Yet like plugging devices into an electrical system, putting us all
together with xmca, or putting us in a room with a chalkboard, or sitting
us at a table for dinner, etc. gives us a collective behavior that defies
thinking about the lines across the pathways, but instead better rewards
thinking about the behavior of the system in which we participate. It is
not to say the internalize/externalize distinction is not useful - if it is
like the current meter, then it helps to provide us with information about
the systems of subject/artifact.
Perhaps a minimal system is: me and my computer. Well, it forms a context
as minimal as Sarason claims is marriage. I can read what I write, not
like it, and click and drag this word from here to there, then feel I like
it. The computer screen provides me feedback. I edit my ideas, they do
not make sense as I first wrote them. Finally they do make sense to me and
I leave the words alone, having learned something. Not connected to my ISP
yet, I am not part of the xmca system, at least not on the time scale of
the next few hours...
The words may not generate any responses on xmca when I post, perhaps
because the ideas are not divergent enough. Everyone could think "been
there, done that." And the xmca system would be largely unchanged, except
from this small subsystem of me and my computer. And this email archived
on a few other computers. And maybe the memory in a few individuals that
Bill can indeed engage in email rambling to the brink of hegemony. Would
that memory have been an event that was assimilated? I cannot tell,
because without further externalizations from you, I cannot gauge whether
mine have changed the rest of the system.
So perhaps I won't post this message. Would that non-act be
non-externalization? Really... The words are already on this laptop in
front of me. But if I don't post them you will never see them. This is
some Frege-like puzzle of non-sense and non-reference. Of course it is
externalization. And accomodation - after all, I am writing these words to
an imagined audience of you who have posted before. In the very act of
assimilating the externalization/internalization analytic split to a
systems perspective, I have changed they way I think of an activity system.
Hmmm....
Thanks!
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Technology in Education
Lesley College, 29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]