Some of the difficulties he mentions seem to turn on a very
Cartesian sounding distinction between physical and mental tools,
or the very parallel modernist one (cf. Latour, who is for me an
insightful thinker about these matters) between 'natural' and
'cultural' objects, rather than to be problematic aspects of the
phenomena of interest per se.
Perhaps that's where Ed will be heading with this line of
inquiry: to take our newer intellectual strategies for escaping
these dichotomies (artifact-focus TO practice-focus, 'cognitive'
TO 'semiotic', User-Artifact TO Ecology/System of Practices,
etc.), and then see what we can make of all these phenomena (esp.
of the improvisational/routinized dimension and relations to the
vexed and currently urgent questions about differences between
interactive meaning-making with persons vs with other sorts of
actants -- like books, computers, videos, etc).
Perhaps more later ... I want to read Yrjo's paper! JAY.
---------
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU