Dear Kari,
Thanks for your response. We agree on most of the key issues, though I’d like to refine on aspect – the issue of knowledge.
Epistemologically, and ontologically, I’d prefer to say that artifacts contain information: artifacts represent knowledge or contain representations of knowledge rather than containing knowledge itself. In the same sense, I propose that a book represents knowledge or contains representations of knowledge. In my view, only a knowing being can “contain” knowledge – once knowledge leaves a human being or another knowing creature, it is no longer knowledge. It is information.
There are probably arguments as to what kind of creature can “know” something. I’d say that horses, dogs, and higher primates can “know.” There is probably some boundary at which we can say that creatures on one side of the boundary “know,” and creatures on the other side of the boundary do not “know.”
For me, this has much to do with the issue of what kinds of creatures may design, in the sense that a creature that designs must be able to choose preferred future states. These issues are closely linked to questions of agency and knowledge. This has echoes across several threads – I’m still working on the question of speculative realism and flat ontology.
Our vocabulary has gaps in it where it comes to talking about what we can learn from artifacts and how we can understand them, as well as the issue of the role that artifacts can play in what we know and how we represent what we know.
The issue fascinates me. I appreciate your reflections.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design
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Kari Kuutti wrote:
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Although we in principle and in general can say that artifacts contain knowledge (“power of knowledge” like Marx it aptly put), that knowledge is not directly available to us. To become a subject of academical research discussion, it has to be articulated, reflected upon, and communicated. We do not really have such aresearch genre, and not even a good vocabulary to discuss directly about the novelty and significance of artifacts in practices. (That is why the “annotated portfolio” idea by Bowers and Gaver is important, it is an attempt to improve our vocabulary in this respect). We now have to go around beating the bushes and use “surrogate measures” such as efficiency or user experience (which themselves are of course relevant and important).
—snip—
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