Just a quick note, since I've been posting skeptically on symmetry, to say
I do see it as a valuable corrective for understanding some
interrelationships.
The clearest example in my experience is when I started using speech
recognition software. They say that newer versions don't require the same
kind of "training," but when I started, before you could just start
talking into a microphone and seeing your words spelled out on the screen,
you first had to read some scripts to "train the software" in recognizing
your personal speech, with your hardware (microphone, sound card, etc.).
Although all the instructions use a rhetoric of the person "training" the
software, it's really an interesting dynamic in which the person is being
trained by the software into how to speak (speed, diction, pauses, etc.)
to achieve accurate recognition. So the program and the person actually
are training each other, quite symmetrically.
Just a useful example, or so it seems to me.
On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Tony Whitson wrote:
> I think Jay reframes things well, and many of us would agree with the general
> position he expresses.
>
> At the same time, I think his formulation reflects the limitations of the
> idea of symmetry -- or maybe why symmetry should not be taken too literally,
> or too far.
>
> Jay asks:
>> what kinds of
>> artifact-mediated literacies will make people in the future the kinds of
>> people they want to be?
>
> A symmetric paraphrase might read:
>
> what kinds of people-mediated artifact-capabilities will make artifacts in
> the future the kinds of artifacts they want to be?
>
> Appreciating Michael's issue with Heidegger (I ordered the Nancy book this
> afternoon), I think this does illustrate H's point that Dasein is special in
> being that Being for which its own Being is problematic. I don't know how
> someone would claim that artefacts are concerned in the same way with the
> existential question of what kinds of artifacts they "want to be" in the
> future. Of course artifacts can have auto-poietic or auto-telic powers, but
> there would not be the same kind of existential question for them as there is
> for us ...
>
> On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Jay Lemke wrote:
>
>>
>> More likely, the analogy with Latour's position is that artifacts are more
>> like people than we imagined before, though actually I think the point is
>> that people are not people without their artifacts (and vice versa in some
>> sense).
>>
>> So what kinds of artifacts make us what kinds of people? and what kinds of
>> artifact-mediated literacies will make people in the future the kinds of
>> people they want to be? perhaps not the same kinds of literacies that made
>> the kinds of people there were in the past ... but the choice ought to
>> belong to those who will be these people in the future, and I'm for
>> supporting some new ways of being human.
>>
>> JAY.
>>
>> At 12:26 PM 6/26/2007, you wrote:
>>> Some quick thoughts...
>>>
>>> The "premise that persons and artifacts are equivalent actants" might be
>>> viewed as the triumph of scientistic, materialist reductionism, no?
>>> People
>>> are just soft machines, after all. And the insistence that "there is no
>>> thinking without tools" is a wonderful limitation of thinking to no more
>>> instrumental calculation.
>>>
>>> And what better way to ensure that people really are no more than soft
>>> machines, extensions of technology, than to deny them access to the
>>> literacies that, one might argue, offer the possibility for freedom, for
>>> a
>>> different kind of thinking that steps out of "the system," at least for
>>> a
>>> moment.
>>>
>>> What do you think? Do you think?
>>>
>>> Martin
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> xmca mailing list
>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>>
>>
>> Jay Lemke
>> Professor
>> University of Michigan
>> School of Education
>> 610 East University
>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>>
>> Tel. 734-763-9276
>> Email. JayLemke@UMich.edu
>> Website. <http://www.umich.edu/~jaylemke%A0>www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
>> _______________________________________________
>> xmca mailing list
>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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>>
>
> Tony Whitson
> UD School of Education
> NEWARK DE 19716
>
> twhitson@udel.edu
> _______________________________
>
> "those who fail to reread
> are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
> -- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
> _______________________________________________
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>
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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Received on Sat Jun 30 18:21 PDT 2007
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