so here it goes:
[The] structuration of cognition found in the
computer lab merged the social, the psychological,
and the physical, and it in turn was the historical
product of social practices. These three levels of
context are in constant dynamic interaction.
Leont'iev's "idea of internalization-externalization
as transitive processes in the system of man's object-
related activity" (Asmolov, 1986-7, p. 93) is particularly useful in
detailing the processes described here: Contextual constraints are
first
located in the tool (i.e., the computer imposes
its limits), externalized in interaction with the
user (mostly through frustrated user moves),
internalized by that user (who recognizes and
remembers these limits), and then externalized
again if the user seeks assistance (e.g., when a
user seeks to circumvent a given limit through
consulting).
Computer use imposed contextual constraints
on the activities of lab clients. They had to
conform to the requirements of computing. The tool
shaped both the external and internal task environment
of those clients. Computing requirements, the result
of a production history externalized in the computer,
could then be mediated, in a sense re-contextualized,
through consulting. Through the work of human agents,
the concrete experience of computer problems and
computer "environments" were re-contextualized and
verbally (re)mediated. These processes were
reciprocal: Through daily consulting praxis, computing knowledge and
computing history was continually re-
produced and re-invented. In effect, we see structuration (Giddens,
1979) unfold as we examine
context closely. to think of these contexts only in
terms of constraints is to start with a misconception:
Action in the computer lab unfolds "in continuity"
with the past as it is embodied and reproduced in
the cultural objects and social practices constituting
the lab environment, but at the same time, it is that
action which "continues" the lab.
(Patthey, 1991, pp. 55-56)
And Eve, here's Giddens for you:
Ernst Bloch says: _Homo semper tiro_, man is always
a beginner. We may agree, in the sense that every
process of action is a production of something new,
a fresh act; but at the same time all action exists
in continuity with the past, which supplies the means
of its initiation. _Structure is thus not to be
conceptualized as a barrier to action, but as
essentially involved in its production._ (1979,
pp. 69-70, emphasis in the original)
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