HCC class lecture 28 John Canny 5/4/05

Administrivia 10-minute project presentations next Monday and Weds at this time. Volunteers for Monday? Or alphabetical…

Course structure Was the course structure (student presentation, instructor summary, discussion) appropriate? Would you change any part of it? Feedback by is fine too…

Course themes We started with pragmatism, a post Civil War philiosophy that emphasized action as the source of meaning and knowledge. The key pragmatists were Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey. Their ideas influenced much of what we talked about. Your thoughts?

And in Russia… Post-revolutionary Russia was establishing itself as a Marxist state. Its intellectuals set about creating an ideal society. This was the era of Sergei Eisenstein in film, Sergei Eisenstein in film, Stanislawsky in acting (“method”), Stanislawsky in acting (“method”), Rodchenko, Kandinsky in painting, Rodchenko, Kandinsky in painting, Shostakovich in music, Shostakovich in music, Mikhail Bakhtin in literature, Mikhail Bakhtin in literature, and... Lev Vygotsky and... Lev Vygotsky

Lev Vygotsky Vygotsky was an extraordinary scholar who studied Law, and taught Literature, History of Art and Psychology by age 22. For many scholars of this time, Marxism provided a unifying framework for scientific, social science, and aesthetic discourse. Vygotsky took it very far, developing theories of knowledge, development, and education that were profoundly influential. His other major influence was William James.

Vygotsky – Genetic method Another of Vygotsky’s key ideas is his “genetic” domains: 1. Onto-genesis: Development by an individual 2. Socio-historical: Development of the society 3. Phylo-genesis: Development of the (human) species 4. Micro-genesis: Creation of ideas & concept learning The genetic methods articulate how behavior changes over time. While he didn’t develop all these domains, many influential ideas (e.g. communities of practice) came later.

Vygotsky – Mediation and Language Perhaps Vygotsky’s greatest philosophical contribution was his formulation of “mediation” – the intelligent use of tools for a purpose. And among tools, language is the most important mediator. Language is also a type of action, albeit an indirect one.

Course Meta-structure Was the influence of pragmatism clear very often? Should it have been made clearer? We had two main themes in the course: The genetic approach, and the linguistic approach. Were these clear? Should they have been emphasized more?

Learning We discussed learning as a concrete genetic domain with readings from many authors (NRC report), Piaget and Vygotsky. Were these main influences discussed enough? Were the applications convincing enough? Should there have been more?

Language theory We had a very short section on linguistic methods, with Lakoff’s metaphors, semiotics and Bakhtin’s dialogical approach. Were these covered in enough detail, or too much? Would you have liked to have seen other material covered (e.g. speech act theory) Should we have moved the symbolic interactionist readings here (Goffman)?

Language algorithms We discussed LSA, clustering and summarization. Were these covered in enough detail? Were there other language algorithms you would have liked to have seen? Was the location of this section in the course sequence appropriate?

Activity Theory We spent quite a bit of time on AT and derivatives (communities of practice). Was it a useful framework? We also covered Actor-Network theory (Latour) and Knowledge Ecologies (Star). Were these useful?

Social Networks We covered several ideas in social networks: centrality, role, and diffusion. Was this material accessible? Did it fit with the theoretical material? Was this material presented in the right place in the course? Should it have come sooner?

Symbolic Interactionism This was the readings by Hall and Goffman. Were they useful? Could there be more/less of this kind of material? This school shows an interesting parallel between language and action (action is a type of language in Hall’s books). Should it be coupled more with the language section?

Open Problems One of the big challenges in a course like this is bridging theory and practice. We attempted to do this with the readings on language algorithms and social networks. Is there other material that would have helped?

Next Steps The material in the course seemed to be a surprisingly coherent collection. Does the coherence convey useful ideas? i.e. is the collection more than the sum of its parts? If the material were to be assembled into a book, would it be useful? How much editing would be needed? i.e. should it just be a collection, or should it be mostly written from scratch?

Discussion Develop your own outline for a monograph like this one. The goal is “useful principles for design of human-centered information systems.” Use the current course outline if you wish. Think about other themes that should be included.