Given sufficient mindful engagement in the partnership, strong effects of working with an intelligent partnership can be expected. However, such partnerships challenge our traditional notions about ability. Usually we view ability, regardless of definition, as the potential of a person's mind, the property of that individual. But, once we couple intelligent technologies with a person's ability, the emphasis might shift to examining the joint system. After all, the system, not the individual alone, carries out the intellectual task.I would add to this discussion the notion that all tools are intended toward the same effect... that of "off-loading" necessary skill, required intellect and attention, distributing these things onto the artefactual environment.
Such a reconceptualization of human ability appears at first to be quite novel. But closer examination reveals that we have implicitly accepted it all along. As Olsen* points out, "Almost any form of human cognition requires one to deal productively and imaginatively with some technology. To attempt to characterize intelligence independently of those technologies seems to be a fundamental error." For example, we would not think of testing people's artistic abilities without the use of some medium such as brush and paint. As Pea has recently pointed out, once appropriate intellectual tools are employed, ability becomes distributed by "off-loading" some of the mental operations required unto the artefactual environment.
*Olsen, D.R. (1986)Intelligence and Literacy: The relationships between intelligence and the technologies of representation and communication.
2 comments:
I spent an afternoon the other day weeding a garden with some other volunteers. I had a Hori-hori and they had some soft metal garden trowels. It became evident within minutes that the nature of the tool I was using offered me more options than the tools they were using. Emphasized when one of the soft trowels bent and broke under use.
The better tool encouraged more options, dig, cut, saw, lever etc. than the poorer. As such I could expand opportunities to address the problem. I literally had more cognitive paths to work with.
Nice post.
Thank you for helping me find Partners in Cognition at this site.It helped me find words for my thoughts.My project at thousand river.com has had me picking words for a project that has never been done before.Now I can keep the words from that paper close to me knowing someone else is feeling the way I do.Sincerely yours Randall C Mann
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