Saturday, July 1, 2006
Dias et al., "Distributed Cognition at Work"
D ias, Patrick, Aviva Freedman, Peter Medway, and Anthony Pare. "Distributed Cognition at Work." Cushman, Kintgen, Kroll, and Rose 199-208.
Dias et al. (reprinted here from Worlds Apart) briefly introduce the concept of distributed cognition, which recognizes "that 'people appear to think in conjunction or partnership with others and with the help of culturally provided tools and implements'" (199). The authors lead with a comparison of Hutchins' research on the complexly coordinated efforts involved in navigating a ship; Dias et al. compare ship navigation to the work of managing economic policy done by the Bank of Canada (BOC). A brief few pages of theorization (drawing on Lave, Hutchings and Engestrom) sets up a protracted analysis of the activities at the BOC. Unlike the ship, however, which is eased by routines, the cognitive load for workers at the BOC requires "extended pieces of reasoning" (201d). Their research focuses on genre, which seem to align with Miller's "social action" model: "It is through complex webs of discursive interactions and, in particular, genres that the cognition of the BOC is accomplished distributively" (202).
"Hutchings points out that the maps used in navigation look more like coordinate charts in geometry rather than like amps in an atlas; this is true as well of the mathematical models and graphs guiding the progress of the BOC" (200). This gets at the role of images, of maps, and the distinction between geometries and geographies (like Moretti).
^See "thought styles": "the recurrence of certain lexical phrases (which represent categories of experience) and argumentative warrants" (203c). The idea of recurrent and shared categories of experience rings of folksonomy somewhat. Folksonomy, in this arrangement, becomes a feature of the organization and its genre-based activities, which include introducing "alternative scenarios" (203c) and "decision making" (204b).
"It is a commonplace at the BOC that what is expected in writing (and in oral
presentations based on written analysis) is more than elevator economics: that
is, this went up and this went down. There must always be interpretation,
analysis, comparison with forecasts, and possibly suggestions for revision to
these forecasts" (206d).
"All in all, then, the BOC thinks and distributes its cognition through sets of
genres, each with its expected form" (207c).
"Of particular interest to our work is the role of verbal discourse in the
distribution of cognition--especially in the form of sets of interweaving genres
that are not just the media and shaping agents for the interpretation but also
the sites for both social sharing and communal creation as well as the sites for
identifying and negotiating internal contradictions" (208d).
- Related sources
- Cole and Engestrom. 1993. "A Socio-cultural approach to distributed cognition. In G. Solomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions (1-46). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
- Hutchings, Edward. 1993. "Learning to Navigate." In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context (pp. 35-63). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
- Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, S. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. 2nd Ed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Baron, "From Pencils to Pixels"
B arron, Dennis. "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies." Cushman, Kintgen, Kroll, and Rose 70-84.
Baron's article, first printed in Selfe and Hawisher's Passions, Pedagogies, includes several figures representative of the points he makes related to a genealogy of writing instruments, from Sumerian reeds to pencils to computers. "From Pencils to Pixels" is, in one sense, a historical piece concerned with identifying the impact of new and emerging technologies on writing activity. That is, the pencil, even though it wasn't initially designed for writing (instead, it was designed to mark lines for measurement) became the most ubiquitous writing instrument ever. Baron takes a moderate stance after he announces at the outset that we must be cautious about hyperbolic predictions for the future of computers (an indicator of 1999, perhaps).
Summary statement: "My contention in this essay is a modest one: the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies. In many ways its development parallels that of the pencil---hence my title--though the computer seems more complex and is undoubtedly more expensive" (72).
Like Ong, Baron makes the case for writing as a technology, too, but rather than considering the ways that writing (or the possibility of writing) restructures thought, he is foremost concerned with comparing the rise of the computer with the development of the pencil.
"New communication technologies, if they catch on, go through a number of strikingly similar stages. After their invention, their speed depends on accessibility, function, and authentication" (71). Baron dwells on these three features, framing the computers mostly in functional terms or, that is, as an instrument or apparatus rather than as material and epistemological force implicated in a complex network or ecology. This is, of course, necessary given his comparison with the pencil, which he treats likewise.
Judging by the amount of space he devotes to it, Baron is concerned most of all with authentication, ranging from issues of validity (forgery, for instance) to related strands of privacy (78), corruption (81), security (81), fraud (80), and integrity (81). This also connects with concerns about error (82) and tranclusivity (81) or the problem of multiple versions of a document, problems tracking changes, methods for verifying dates of production, and so on.
"But technology has a trailing edge as well as a down side, and studying how computers are put to use raises serious issues in the politics of work and mechanisms of social control" (83).
- Related sources:
- Bolter, Jay. Source unnamed. (74b)
- Marvin, Carolyn. 1988. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford UP.
- Petroski, Henry. 1990. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. New York: Knopf.