Thanks, Derek -- your reply was perfect. You detected the bulge in my cheek
where my tongue was.
--
on the serious side, i should perhaps have mentioned that I spent a lot of
time prior to my design life working with the Soviets, including a long trip
to Moscow in a bitterly cold winter. (It was so cold that even the Soviets
said it was cold.) I say Soviet because it was indeed USSR.
But I was therefore heavily involved with activity theory,
mostly courtesy of Mike Cole, who had studied with Vygotsky and who was my
guide.
And of course i spent a lot of time with Yrjö Engeström, from Finland, who
has suddenly become hot in these circles. He was a frequent visitor to
UCSD, and I visited his summer home in Finland. And of course there was
Bruno latour, although my interactions with him came later. of more
importance was the anthropologist Ed Hutchins, who was my postdoctoral
fellow, then i hired as an assistant professor,and then he became my mentor.
So yes, this is all about me, but mainly to show the interconnections of
people. I leave it to you-all to figure out whether or not i belong in this
story.
But part of the point is that there were a huge number of actors involved
here. Oh, I forgot Xerox PARC, where I worked with Alan Kay, Danny Bobrow,
John Seely Brown. and Stu Card and Tom Moran. And Bill Buxton visited us at
UCSD.
heavy going, those days. Everyone interacted with everyone.
Notice: the complete absence of people from the design community. That came
later.
Don
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