Ryan Coyer

Aaron Schram

Assignment 16




1. what did you find

1.1. interesting about the article?

We found to be very interesting the parts that dealt specifically with the fact that people and their system environments are tightly coupled. "The environment is one's partner or cognitive ally in the struggle to control activity.

1.2. not interesting about the article?

The section about culture and cognition was not very interesting.


2. what do you consider the main message of the article?

The main message of the article is "People form a tightly coupled system with their environments" and for a person to get the most out of that system it needs to allow for proper representation of real world situations.


3. the article talks about “new foundations” for HCI

3.1. please discuss a couple of “old foundations” for HCI

The "old foundations" of HCI are concentrated more developing the actual human-computer interface such as the GUI, mouse, keyboard, joystick, etc.

3.2. how “new” according to your knowledge are these “new foundations”?

These foundations are not completely new as we have many things moving in the "new foundations" directions within modern programs and operating systems, such as the ability to distribute and take information from large networks.


4. in the class on Jan 14, 2004, we showed a multi-media show about the CLever project ‡ question: which elements of distributed cognition are described in this video?
remark/hint: in case you have to rely on “distributed cognition” to remember what was shown — you can refresh your memory by watching the multi-media show again (it only takes 6 minutes) at: http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/clever/index.html by activating the link “Load Flash Movie”

All the types of cognition discussed in the article could be demonstrated using the CLEVER project.


5. here is a quote from Neil Postman: “anatomy is not destiny: The invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century not only made it possible to improve defective vision but suggested the idea that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of nature nor the ravages of time. Eyeglasses refuted the belief that anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our minds as well as our bodies are improvable!”

5.1. argue what the this quote has to do with the article?

This quote implies that we should not have to settle for poorly designed HCIs in regards to the article.

5.2. do you agree with the quote?

We agree with the article. Humans are inventive enough to overcome anything that troubles them or hinders their productivity, or so has been our experience.