Expert Knowledge and User Know-How
A paper I just submitted to GLIMPSE: Proceedings of the Society for Phenomenology and Media. Here’s the full text; here’s an abstract, of sorts:
Foolishness, frustration, and feelings of intellectual inadequacy seem to be common in the context of computer use. Computer books written explicitly for “dummies” and “idiots” have been runaway successes; phrases such as being computer “literate” or “illiterate” or of “dumbing down” the operation and documentation of computer systems are all commonplace. Feelings of foolishness and inadequacy seem clearly dysfunctional in our “networked” or “information” society –a social and economic order for which networks, information and the Internet itself are widely regarded as eponymous (for example, Castells; Bell; Turkle). Moreover, these feelings present an interesting contrast with what many have said about the educational potential of computers as cognitive or “mindtools” that form a close “intellectual partnership” with the learner, “amplifying” her thinking “by transcending the limitations of the mind” (Jonassen, Mindtools, 10).
By giving voice to ignored, anecdotal user “know how”, and by contrasting it to more expert and theoretical understandings, I intend to shed light on how computers are experienced by users, especially in educational contexts. By presenting and analyzing a number of anecdotes of computer use, I hope to show how the acquisition of denigrated user “know-how” is actually intimately interconnected with computer expertise and with understandings of the role of computers in education. I will also show how the actual experience of computer use casts into doubt the educational efficacy of computers understood as instruments of cognitive amplification, or simply “mindtools.”
bumped into your blog while surfing into Andrew Feenberg’s world. I continue to be intrigued with the work you have underway with Learningspaces. It’s time we followed up on that get-together we proposed back in Feb after Northern Voices. I am trying to zero in on my own doctoral research project and need inspiration from like-minded souls!
Comment by Vivian Forssman — July 18, 2005 @ 7:22 am
bumped into your blog while surfing into Andrew Feenberg’s world. I continue to be intrigued with the work you have underway with Learningspaces. It’s time we followed up on that get-together we proposed back in Feb after Northern Voices. I am trying to zero in on my own doctoral research project and need inspiration from like-minded souls!
Comment by Vivian Forssman — July 18, 2005 @ 7:47 am