Bedtime Reading for Technologies: Elaborations on a Theme of Mitroff's

ABSTRACT In the current issue of JITTA, Ian Mitroff takes to task a certain breed of technologists who champion a futuristic vision of humanity as cybernetic organisms. These visionaries, Mitroff argues, need to "go back to school" in order to gain a more sophisticated and sociologically-informed view of we humans and how we know. One key thing that is missing in the thinking of these technologists, Mitroff notes, is the recognition that mind is "'distributed' in society." The current paper takes this theme as its point of departure. However, in lieu of sending the excessively narrow technologist back to school, three books are recommended as "bedtime reading." They include Edwin Hutchins' Cognition in the Wild, Louis L. Bucciarelli's Designing Engineers, and Bruno Latour's Aramis or the Love of Technology. A review of these works, which all tell stories about the creation and/or use of technology, support Mitroff's point that mind is social. Moreover, they show that mind is in fact socio-technical in nature. Knowledge is seen to be embedded in our technologies and discourses, as well as in our individual minds. What we can be said to know, in fact, arises in complex interactions among and across these domains. These books, accordingly, also shed light on the truly broad scope of our endeavor, when we undertake the development of new technologies and systems. Moreover, in the spirit of this special issue of JITTA, these books call our attention to the centrality of language and dialogue in the creation of technology and the knowledge that is associated with it. INTRODUCTION In the paper by Ian Mitroff in the current issue (Mitroff 2001), the author takes to task a certain breed of technologists whose vision of one possible, and even desirable, future involves the transformation of humans into cyborgs. The basic idea behind this vision is that the so-called "super-intelligence" of computers can be joined directly and cybernetically to our own in order to vastly enhance our capabilities. Indeed, we are told, we must take this step in order to forestall an alternative future in which we become subordinate to a race of intelligent machines. Mitroff's critique of the proponents of this vision, then, turns on their "confusion over the nature of intelligence." There are two key aspects to Mitroff's argument. First, he notes that one hallmark of human intelligence is that people "think about thinking" - an accomplishment that currently seems impossibly remote in the realm of artificial intelligence. Second, the capabilities of an individual human mind cannot reasonably be grasped, and therefore simulated, without a consideration of "all the other minds to which it is connected and thereby inseparable." The mind, indeed, is truly " 'distributed' in society" and must be viewed as inherently social in character. Mitroff concludes, then, that computer scientists need to complete their educations: "Computer scientists, who are supposed to [sic] hard-nosed and rigorous before they accept anything, are actually quite sloppy in their thinking. They literally need to "go back to school" and to get a broader education before they can accomplish their aims. They need to understand what it is to 'think about thinking with and through others.'" In this essay, I take as my point of departure Mitroff's recommendation that computer scientists "go back to school"; and I make the assumption that his counsel can readily be extended to certain other technologists, including members of our own information-systems community. I focus, in particular, on Mitroff s second argument about the distribution of mind in society - his point about "thinking with and through others." I will extend this point by arguing that technologists sometimes misunderstand not only the social nature of human intelligence or mind, but also the relationship of mind to technology. In short, mind in fact is best viewed as socio-technical in nature. …