I consider the notion of a “user interface” inappropriate. The notion of an interface
suggests that we are dealing with a property of the artefact, when we should actually keep the entire interaction in view. For example, is a table’s surface its user
interface? Or perhaps the palms of the hands of the user touching it? How should
we decide?
(LFE-b-2015, translation Hajo Greif )
As a matter of fact, technologies barely modify the world; the ways in which
human beings interact with technology do. The difference may seem small but it is
fundamental. The public view is too much focused on devices to be able to grasp
the force of technology, when it should look at human beings and their behaviours
instead.
(Lobo 2016, html, translation Hajo Greif )
These two caveats concerning the appropriate perspective on artefacts have not
been articulated by prominent philosophers of technology but by an ergonomist
and a technology blogger respectively. This may be precisely why they appear
more pointed and better grounded than what many scholars in the philosophy and
social studies of technology try to express in so many words.
The relationship between human beings and technological artefacts on ‘micro’
(first quote) and ‘macro’ levels (second quote) is a key concern, first, in the largely
sceptic – and often utterly romantic and conservative – German tradition of philosophical inquiries into technology, from Karl Jaspers, Oswald Spengler, Martin
Heidegger, Günther Anders and Ernst Cassirer to its most recent and congenially baroque and sophisticated incarnation in Gernot Böhme (2008). Second, and
from a different epistemic and ideological perspective, a classic theme in science
and technology studies is the relationship of “mutual shaping” between artefacts
and social practices (as paradigmatically stated by Pinch and Bijker 1984 and
Edwards 1994). Without sharing either the first tradition’s conservatism and scepticism about technology and the human condition or the second tradition’s relativism about the human condition as such, the point concerning cognitive artefacts
that I broadly share with either tradition: what is relevant is not the artefact itself
or any cognitive, societal or other ‘impact’ it may be claimed to have but the
9 The intelligence of
environments
suggests that we are dealing with a property of the artefact, when we should actually keep the entire interaction in view. For example, is a table’s surface its user
interface? Or perhaps the palms of the hands of the user touching it? How should
we decide?
(LFE-b-2015, translation Hajo Greif )
As a matter of fact, technologies barely modify the world; the ways in which
human beings interact with technology do. The difference may seem small but it is
fundamental. The public view is too much focused on devices to be able to grasp
the force of technology, when it should look at human beings and their behaviours
instead.
(Lobo 2016, html, translation Hajo Greif )
These two caveats concerning the appropriate perspective on artefacts have not
been articulated by prominent philosophers of technology but by an ergonomist
and a technology blogger respectively. This may be precisely why they appear
more pointed and better grounded than what many scholars in the philosophy and
social studies of technology try to express in so many words.
The relationship between human beings and technological artefacts on ‘micro’
(first quote) and ‘macro’ levels (second quote) is a key concern, first, in the largely
sceptic – and often utterly romantic and conservative – German tradition of philosophical inquiries into technology, from Karl Jaspers, Oswald Spengler, Martin
Heidegger, Günther Anders and Ernst Cassirer to its most recent and congenially baroque and sophisticated incarnation in Gernot Böhme (2008). Second, and
from a different epistemic and ideological perspective, a classic theme in science
and technology studies is the relationship of “mutual shaping” between artefacts
and social practices (as paradigmatically stated by Pinch and Bijker 1984 and
Edwards 1994). Without sharing either the first tradition’s conservatism and scepticism about technology and the human condition or the second tradition’s relativism about the human condition as such, the point concerning cognitive artefacts
that I broadly share with either tradition: what is relevant is not the artefact itself
or any cognitive, societal or other ‘impact’ it may be claimed to have but the
9 The intelligence of
environments