Just a quote, to continue on research on how artefacts support thinking and knowledge creation
As I construct this chapter [...] I am continually creating, putting aside, and re-organizing chunks of text. I have a file which contains all kinds of hints and fragments, stored up over a long period of time, which may be germane to the discussion. I have source texts and papers full of notes and annotations. As I (literally, physically) move these things about, interacting first with one, then another, making new notes, annotations and plans, so the intellectual shape of the chapter grows and solidifies. It is a shape which does not spring fully developed from inner cogitations. Instead, it is the product of a sustained and iterated sequence of interactions between my brain and a variety of external props. In these cases, I am willing to say, a good deal of actual thinking involves loops and circuits which run outside the head and through the local environment. Extended intellectual arguments and theses are almost always the product of brains acting in concert with multiple external resources. These resources enable us to pursue manipulations and juxtapositions of ideas and data which would quickly baffle the un-augmented brain. […] In all such cases, the real environment of printed words and symbols allows us to search, store, sequence and reorganize data in ways alien to the on-board repertoire of the biological brain.
Clark, A. (1998). Magic Words: How Language Augments Human Computation (.pdf). P. Carruthers and J. Boucher (Eds) Language And Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1998, pp. 62-183.
Tags: knowledge representationsArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/02/24.html#a1506; comments are here.
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