Dear Francois,
Thanks for this reply. It raises far too many issues to permit a short reply, so I won’t try.
I simply want to say that when we speak of knowledge and knowing, distinctions are important. To say that artifacts mediate knowing — that is, that they mediate how humans beings know and what they know — is true. It is not the same thing to say that an artifact mediate knowing or to say that an artifact is “packed with knowledge.”
Artifacts do not “contain” knowledge. They cannot be “packed with knowledge” even though the people who create artifacts must be knowing actors to create them. Not even books or computers “contain” knowledge. Only a knowing agent “contains” knowledge, that is, the capacity to know and to act on what we know. Artifacts know nothing and they cannot act.
For that matter, this is the case for language. Language mediates knowing for those creatures who can use language, but language is not “packed with knowledge.” We mediate through media — our tools. Our tools do not act separate from us. Tools are the extensions of those who create them. They act when human beings or other tool using creates act with and through those tools. When we put an artifact such as a club, a sword, or a hammer on a table, or drop it on the ground, it can no longer act. Because it contains no knowledge, it cannot think on its own separate from human beings who act with it.
There are now machines or tools that can be programmed to act or to do something without a direct physical connection to those who create them, but so far, neither do these tools know or contain knowledge. The programs that guide them are high-level artifacts containing the instructions and decisions of primary actors for whom the tools function as agents. The properties of knowledge, knowing, and agency remain with the creators of those tools.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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Francois Nsenga wrote:
—snip—
May I add to you latest post that not only language mediates knowledge and
knowing, but as well all other human artifacts do? The Maasai club is
packed with knowledge, so much so as his language! The same as the Inuit
Igloo, the Samurai sword and his calligraphy, or the Western type of shirt
I am wearing.
—snip--
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