I have played these category games before in analytic philosophy, and they
do indeed go 'around and around', like musical chairs, chair and chairness,
being the thing in which the great minds place the mind-in-itself,
biologically and metaphorically placing mind. Getting a grip on reality,
category shifts with disparate theoretical perspectives seem mostly to lead
to religious arguments about design principles, however asymptotic in
application, and which could otherwise be handled quite practically by
paying attention to what it is people want to do (or might want to do) and
designing and building accordingly.
Simple activity theory seems to handle this well. Interaction simply
reduces to using the tool to accomplish the goal, whether it is so-named as
interaction or not is neither here nor there. I could say that I interact
with you using this computer in front of me, or when I speak to you, but do
I interact with you if I offer you some lasagna on a fork? If my motive
for the offer is to ask your opinion to the question, "Does this lasagna
have too much edge on it?" then perhaps so. If my motive is to use up the
lasagna before it goes stale, perhaps, perhaps not. Who cares, what's the
point? The design of the fork works well either way, free from
fine-grained disinctions in context.
In its complexity of operation, we anthropomorphize the computer, we talk
to it. Do we interact with it? Practically, no. The key being the root
'actum' implying volition or motive, and agency. These seem to be
distinctly human qualities at this time.
Eva, your remembering for us the cautionary note is especially nice. Thanks!
Bill
>At 21.20 -0400 98-05-12, Eugene Matusov wrote:
>>I, as a
>>lay person, would say that I never interact with a computer, like I do not
>>interact with a fork or a spoon -- I just use them.
>
>
>At 15.08 -0400 98-05-13, Luiz Ernesto Merkle wrote:
>>Your example of the fork is wonderful. A fork, to be understood in its
>>use, need to be contextualized either in "the art of cooking" or in
>>"pleasures of eating". It is not easy to be a chef or a gourmet, a good
>>one. The development of cutlery and cooking appliances have change the way
>>people cook and eat in the same way that their habits of eating and
>>cooking have affect the development of these tools.
>
>Nevertheless...
>
>there seems to me there is, at least potentially, a qualitative difference
>between the computer-as-a-tool and the fork-as-a-tool. A difference in
>where boundaries between the inter actants are. I may not interact with the
>fork, but I interact with the lasagna, using the fork. In the case of the
>computer, this lasagna//fork-me boundary will(??) be somewhere IN the
>computer.
>
>On the other hand...
>
>I'm forwarding from the past, a cautionary note by Arne Raeithel on the
>subject of transparency.
>
>see you!
>
>The question's Eva
>eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se
>
>
>**************************************************
>Date: 93-01-13 10:07:30 MEZ
>From: PO61170%DHHUNI4.BITNET who-is-at vm.gmd.de
>Subject: so-called Transparency of Tools
>To: xact who-is-at ucsd.edu
>
>While I do agree with the general picture of operations that Mike painted
>in his last note (the lowered artifact-apex becomes a seemingly direct
>connection), I also want to issue a warning against using the metaphor of
>transparency.
>
>I learned this in recent discussions with Heinz Zuellighoven, who is a
>software engineer basing his work on Heidegger's analysis of tools and
>materials in "Sein und Zeit" (Being and Time) -- see lit-ref at the end. We
>asked: "What does it mean that a tool becomes transparent? Compare gripping
>a thing with the hand, and with a pair of pliers. In the first case, we
>remain conscious of holding it with our hands and may direct attention to
>how rough/smooth the thing is, or to how heavy, and so on. In the second
>case, some overquick readers of Heidegger would apparently say that the
>pliers cease to be visible in the sense that the second case reduces to the
>first for the subject. This would mean that we again are able to feel
>roughness and weight with our palms and fingers, the iron of the pliers
>being just some sort of conductor with no other characteristic of its own
>(like a glass pane for vision).
>
>But this is patently false, and seeing this makes the difference between
>Heidegger and Leont'ev on the one hand, and the followers of the
>transparency metaphor (sorry: I do not have the name of the software
>engineer who is usually cited here) and also Bateson on the other side. For
>the subject the tool becomes an extension of her/his body, and the direct
>connection to the object is now further outside where tool and object touch
>each other. With the pliers, I feel the object with iron fingers,
>literally, and roughness is not so easily perceived. Instead, solidity and
>hardness tested by stiff and rigid metal is now in the center of the object
>image. In this sense the "edge of the tool" remains visible all the time,
>but as part of the present self-image, not as a separate object
>(ready-to-hand, but not present-at-hand, >zuhanden<, not >vorhanden<).
>
>Heinz convinced me that people who design software tools must keep this in
>mind, because a literal understanding of the transparency metaphor would
>lead them to offer "tools" on computer screens, whose "edges" are not
>visible. But these cannot be incorporated by users like a good handicraft
>tool whose edges are never outside our awareness.
>
>In the pending discussion of Bateson's "Form, Substance, and Difference" I
>will reiterate the point above with regard to his definition of what a
>Territory is (for me: the complementary signs of the object at the edge to
>the tool, for him: the thing-in-itself as described by natural science --
>"billard ball pleroma").
>
>With a transparent tool we cannot find a certain object with a definite
>boundary, only the mapping of mappings of maps, around and around. With a
>seeing/feeling/gripping tool concrete objects emerge from this endless
>cycle, specific resistance co-defined by tool and counterprocess,
>>Gegenstaendlichkeit< (object-ness) of which Leont'ev speaks then at
>length, as does Heidegger IN THE LATE TWENTIES already.
>
>I got carried away, sorry. Hope this remained understandable.
>
>Arne.
>Psychology U of Hamburg
>
>Reinhard Budde & Heinz Zuellighoven wrote one chapter in the book >Software
>Development and Reality Construction< edited by Christiane Floyd et al.
>(Springer Verlag 1992). I do not have the volume here.
>I also have a chapter there (>Activity Theory as a Foundation for Design<)
>-- tools are parts of operational (or operative) means, i.e. of the
>complete cycle of a functional system with the edge marking the point where
>subject meets object.
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."]