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I see this discussion (before practice was added) as akin to the
debate between "realism" and "idealism" in the sense that people take
sides and then find it nearly impossible to see that there could even
be another side (listen to Richard Dawkin ridiculing anyone who does
not agree with him, as a terrible example). In part this is because
the taking of sides seems to affect the sort of arguments we accept
and make.

In cybernetic systems, which are essentially circular in form, it
becomes impossible to distinguish the controller from the controlled.
Each is controller to the other. Control is a circular action that can
be thought of as being located here, or there, but which I now think
of as not really being located at one point or another at all, but as
existing in the circle, between, shared, mutual.

Learning from this understanding, I came to prefer not to take the
position that design skill, knowledge, and action (the designing)
should be located in the human or in the technology/machine, but as
shared. Just as I will happily accede that when I converse with
another (at which time my communication is circular), any intelligence
is neither mine not my  conversational partner's, but comes from our
conversation, I will accept that if there seems to be creativity or
imagination resulting from my action with my computer, or a book, of
paper and pencil, or a colleague, then the creativity and intelligence
come about through the action of both together in a circle.

So I don't see why we go on with this discussion. For me, the
understanding that makes sense is not that one drives the other, but
that both work together. This is the meaning of a system: the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts.

Ranulph