It was lovely to wake up to have your conversations with M Lasagna for
breakfast. It was very poetic, very Latourean, and it also reminded me of
the Japanese concept of Kobitos, which I have learned about when roaming
through the xlist archives.
In my habit of counteracting the "institutional forgetting" of THIS
activity system I would like to bring in another forward from the past,
from as far back as 1989, when the xlchc community had a habit of posting
"lab notes" telling participants in distributed sites about local events
with AT relevance.
Before I do so, I would just like to voice a sympathy with your approach,
Luiz: the activities of WORK and PLAY should just as little as genders
(Mary) be considered as a dichotomy of polar opposites.
Play seriously!
Eva
********************* A Forward from the Past **************************
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 89 14:53:59 CST
=46rom: grudin who-is-at mcc.com (Jonathan Grudin)
Subject: Visit by Yutaka Sayeki
To: xlchc who-is-at ucsd.edu
The MCC Human Interface Laboratory was recently privileged to be visited by
Yutaka Sayeki. In his talk he focused on the foundations of the
Kobito/Theatre metaphor, extensions of which were discussed on xlchc. (More
on this in a moment.) He also discussed some work by Larry Parsons
(formerly of UCSD, now at the University of Texas here in Austin), students
of Yutaka Sayeki, and Sayeki himself on the overlooked centrality of our
sense of our body to our organization of even quite abstract spatial tasks.
Each aspect of the talk provided background to his recent contributions to
xlchc. This background is no doubt familiar to lchc members. I hope other
xlchc members have the opportunity to hear it from Sayeki himself, as the
few words of summary that follow will not do it justice.
The Kobito model: Sayeki described a practice, apparently widespread in
Japan, that might be described as cultivated animism -- of attempting to
understand physical objects by projecting oneself into them, as it were. He
described the use of this technique in design, where an engineer might
project themself into a toaster, or an architect into a building, and try
to imagine life from that perspective as a way of improving the design
(making life more comfortable). He described this general practice as being
widespread and leading to a mundane practice of engaging in dialogue with
objects, such as a cup of tea; this is not only germane to the recent
discussion of Piaget et cetera, but also established (for me) the context
from which the Theatre model emerged. Similarly, his discussion of the role
of our body sense in acting in the world provided context for his comments
on tool use (an aspect of particular interest in my environment of computer
interface design).
If I have perhaps done more to muddy than clarify please ask Yutaka Sayeki
to elaborate his most interesting position.
Jonathan
******************** End Forward *****************************************
=46ootnote 1: Yutaka Sayeki was on the xlchc list himself in those old days.
=46ootnote 2: In the close context of this message, other messages mention
"Sayeki-Ueno's Kobito/Theatre model"