D. Norman: Things That Make Us Smart
CiteULike: Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine
Donald Normal, 1994:
"The cognitive age of humans started when we used sounds, gestures, and symbols to refer to objects, things, and concepts. The sound, gesture, or symbol is not the thing itself; rather, it stands for or refers to the thing: it represents it. " [p. 47]
Norman went on to discuss Cognitive Artifacts, or tools of thought. "Cognitive artifacts are tools, cognitive tools [p.47]", he claims. The concentration of the book is on external representations that can, potentially, be shared among people. These are objects, designs, symbols, and other usual suspects that Norman is known to lay his eyes on. He seems to consider language as something separate, though for no particular reason.
"The powers of cognition come from abstraction and representation: the ability to represent perceptions, experiences, and thoughts in some medium other than that in which they have occurred, abstrated away from irrelevant details. This is the essence of intelligence, for if the representation and the processes are just rigth, then new experiences, insights, and creations can emerge [p.47]."
Like all analogies, the "cognitive tools" metaphor is inadequate and limiting, for it brings up the image of an individual tool, perhaps created haphazadedly for a task at hand. While there are plenty examples of such disposible symbols in our everyday life, human cognition is characterized by systematic use of symbols, or alternatively, use of symbol systems. Black and Decker make collections of tools, but few people think of "tool systems." (Norman would argue that design of tools have to follow some sort of grammar or principles, which brings the analogy closer to alignment.)
We are emersed in symbolic systems: writing, numbers, myths, etc. What is special about symbolic systems that are not available in symbols? Simply speaking, the most powerful ones take on their own lifes after humans created them. They not only help humans to solve the problem at hand, but through the logical power inherent in these symbol systems (where does it come from?), they also greatly extend human intelligence, to a point that is unimaginable to someone who thinks with aids of accidental symbolisms.
The downside with symbol systems is that they have to be learned, often times quite arduously. Symbols and their real-world referents loose the intuitive connections, and symbols are their almost for symbols sake (think of calculous). The choise of representation, which is the focus point of Norman’s book, has shifted from the individual person to social authorities and convensions. Unless and until one is proficient and sophisticated enough, s/he will be limited by the representation that symbolic system provides. There is no mentioning of this quatum leap from individual symbols to a system of symbols in Norman’s book.
Norman presented some strange choices of works, particularly the one on the evolution of language [p. 122] by Mervin Donald. Other things of interest:
The game of "15": with 9 digits, the player have to pick 3 that equals 15. Under the arrange of a magic square, the problem is isomophic to tic-tac-toe.
Then there are some reading/writing related activities.
"In the Middle Ages, just the opposite was true. Reading was generally done aloud, often to an audience. It was an active process, so active that Susan Noakes, in her analysis of medieval reading, points out "that it had been recommended by physicians, since classical times, as a mild form of exercise, like walking." [p. 46]
Noakes, S. (1988). Timely reading: Between exegesis and interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell Univeristy Press. Amazon