Maybe we need to use xorgan in order to avoid boring members uninterested
in organizational issues.
mike
------
>From xact-request who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu Thu Apr 30 16:08:08 1998
>From: "Richard Beach" <rbeach who-is-at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
To: xact who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Genre and Activity Theory
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 98 17:44:17 -0500
Hello from the tundra. I'm currently sitting in on a genre theory seminar
taught by Carol Berkenkotter. We're talking about the relationship between
current genre theory and activity theory. This week we discussed the essay in
Written Communication by David Russell applying a CHAT analysis to a writing.
I'm forwarding one particularly interesting posting by Tom Erickson regarding
computers as tools.
Responding to the message of <v03110701b16e4394a040 who-is-at [198.182.248.138]>
from Tom Erickson <snowfall who-is-at acm.org>:
>
> Genre Theory
> Statement to the Class (4)
> April 30, 1998
> Tom Erickson
>
> Appropriable Technology
>
> In the last decade or so, one of the principle goals in the design of
> personal computers and the programs which run upon them has been designing
> them to be 'intuitive.' Of course, 'intuitive' is really just a
> marketing-induced illusion, but it does serve as a code for "easy enough to
> learn so that little or no recourse to an instruction manual is required,"
> which is still a pretty attractive thing.
>
> More recently, attention has shifted from designing systems for individuals
> (i.e. the 'personal' in PC) to designing systems for groups of people. For
> example, the advent of the social phenomenon of "the web," the commercial
> success of 'groupware' such as Lotus Notes, and the near ubiquity of tropes
> such as "process re-engineering" and "knowledge management" has lead many
> managers and engineers to begin to think in terms that would be familiar
> (in a horrifyingly naive sort of way) to activity theorists. Indeed, as
> enacted in the corporate setting, those thinking about designing systems
> for groups have made a sort of inverted Latourian move: they are treating
> non-human agents symmetrically with human agents by the simple expedient of
> ignoring the human and social characteristics of human agents. This is
> exemplified by the memo from an IBM Vice President which crossed my
> computer screen this Tuesday. It read, in part:
>
> As we tell our customers, it is up to each of use to
> change the way we work by using the right tools, the right way.
>
> - Mike Hill, Vice President of Technology Deployment, IBM, 4/28/98
>
> Rather than designing systems for groups, the tactic is to design groups
> for systems.
>
> As you might guess, I think this is deplorable (not to mention hopelessly
> naive). It seems to me that the notion of "easy enough to learn..." that
> was such an attractive aspect of personal computers ought to have a
> counterpart in the more group-oriented world. I like the phrase "
> appropriable technology", but "appropriable genres" is more to the point,
> if lacking the resonance of the first phrase. (I am now using genre in the
> David Russell sense of "a typified use of material tools ... by an activity
> system.")
>
> This brings me to the central question I want to raise: are there
> particular characteristics of a genre that facilitate its appropriation by
> an activity system?
>
> I see at least three candidates for characteristics of an appropriable
> technology:
> 1. Visible Use: The process of use is visible. An example is Russell's
> statement that he appropriated the shopping list genre by seeing his mother
> make similar lists. A negative example are personal computers and their
> programs: unlike, say, a white board, personal computers are not designed
> to make their use by one person visible to another, even though watching
> over someone's shoulder while they use a program is an excellent way to
> learn.
>
> 2. Glassboxing (as opposed to blackboxing): The material artifact contains
> traces of its construction and use that can be deciphered by its intended
> audience. A positive example is the world wide web. While it is not
> possible document, more than one observer has speculated that the success
> of the web is due in part to the fact that web browsers provide the option
> for inspecting the html (the code that generates web pages), thus
> permitting anyone so inclined to see how particular effects were produced,
> and thus expand their facility in the medium. Curiously, a negative example
> would seem to be many teaching genres which are commodified, stripped of
> the traces of the process of their construction within an activity system
> -- perhaps this seeming contradiction is explained by a third way in which
> appropriation may be supported.
>
> 3. Social Transmissiblity. A third way in which the appropriation of a
> genre might be supported is through explicit social support. That is, the
> activity system within which a genre is used explicitly includes social
> roles (and rewards) which support the transmission of the genre. While this
> is not a characteristic of the genre, per se, it seems likely that genre
> may have characteristics that support their social transmission. Perhaps
> this is the explanation for the commoditization of disciplinary genre used
> in the activity system of the University.
>
> I'll conclude with a poem by Gary Snyder, which captures most of these
> issues quite beautifully:
>
> Axe Handles
>
> One afternoon the last week in April
> Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
> One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
> He recalls the hatchet-head
> Without a handle, in the shop
> And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
> A broken-off axe handle behind the door
> Is long enough for a hatchet,
> We cut it to length and take it
> with the hatchet head
> And work hatchet, to the wood block
> There I begin to shape the old handle
> With the hatchet, and the phrase
> First learned from Ezra Pound
> Rings in my ears!
> "When making an axe handle
> the pattern is not far off."
> And I say this to Kai
> "Look: We'll shape the handle
> By checking the handle
> Of the axe we cut with--"
> And he sees. And I hear it again:
> It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century
> A.D. "Essay on Literature"--in the
> Preface: "In making the handle
> Of an axe
> By cutting wood with an axe
> the model is indeed near at hand."
> My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
> Translated that and taught it years ago
> And I see: Pound was an axe,
> Chen was an axe, I am an axe
> And my son a handle, soon
> To be shaping again, model
> And tool, craft of culture,
> How we go on.
>
>
> # # #
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> Tom Erickson
> IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
> Email: snowfall who-is-at acm.org (preferred); snowfall@us.ibm.com(IBM confidential)
> http://www.pliant.org/personal/Tom_Erickson
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> .
Richard Beach
359 Peik Hall, 159 Pillsbury Dr., S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455
rbeach who-is-at maroon.tc.umn.edu