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Computers and knowledge: a dialogical approach

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Abstract

Artificial intelligence researchers interested in knowledge and in designing and implementing digitized artifacts for representing or sharing knowledge play a crucial role in the development of a knowledge-based economy. They help answer the question of how the computer devices they develop can be appropriated by the collectives that manage the flow of knowledge and the know-how underlying human organizations. A dialogical, constructivist view of interaction processes permits theorizing the role of digital tools, seen as sociotechnical devices that serve both as resources and as sources of communication within our organizations.

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Notes

  1. Proposed by Jean-Louis Dessalles at the 1995 Cognitive Research Association summer school held in Bonas, France

  2. For a review, see the highly interesting paper by Lassègue and Visetti (2002)

  3. I will return to this point in detail later

  4. I still believe in the importance of an action-based dynamic, a retroactive construction process, but I am more doubtful about its logicalization and its representationist background

  5. The ideas in this part are developed in detail in Brassac (2003a, b)

  6. A few leads can be found in Brassac (2003a), but there is a great deal of ground to cover if we want to take a new look at Mead’s intuitions about communication, the heart of the social order. “Social psychology has, as a rule, dealt with various phases of social experience from the psychological standpoint of individual experience. The point of approach which I wish to suggest is that of dealing with experience from the standpoint of society, at least from the standpoint of communication as essential to the social order(Mead 1934/1967: 1; my underlining)

  7. “And then came out of my mouth a surprising, unexplainable sentence for which I still feel barely responsible” (J. Gracq, Un beau ténébreux, 1945, p 38; our translation); “It is indeed he who pronounced these words, they came out of his mouth, and yet they surprised him” (J.-M. Coetzee, Disgrace, 2001, p 247; our translation)

  8. Even though it is patent (see for example Bakhtine, 1929/1977, p 47)

  9. We know Jacques’s stance on Bakhtine’s work: “I owe much to M. Bakhtine, but unwillingly” (1985, p 102; our translation)

  10. There are no reflections like these in the book edited by Depretto (1997) entitled L’héritage de Bakhtine, which focuses instead on Bakhtine’s contribution to the theory of literature

  11. A term pertinently coined by Jean-Claude Kaufmann (2001)

  12. I will not go into the reasons for the two modifiers. Just two points. First of all, as Conein himself admitted, there is no single way of naming things in this research field: “Under various names such as ’situated cognition’, ’distributed cognition’ and ’situated action’, these studies deal with the same problems, such as the analysis (...) of the function and impact of ’intelligent’ artifacts in the organization of human activities” (1994, p 419; our translation). Secondly, when Hutchins was asked why he chose the term “distributed”, he replied: “because situated was already taken” (personal communication, 2000)

  13. Image Informatics and Information Systems Laboratory

  14. Lorraine Laboratory of Research in Informatics and its Applications

  15. Use-Supported Design for Technologies, Innovation and Change

  16. Uses in Digital Information Technologies Laboratory (RNRT platform, La Vilette)

  17. For more details, see Brassac et al. (1998) and Grégori (1999a, 1999b)

  18. This project was made possible by an ANVAR grant (Agence Nationale pour la VAlorization de la Recherche). Under this grant, Nicolas Grégori had the opportunity to prepare his psychology thesis on the premises of the Eurilor-Multimedia, a company located in Brabois-Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy. At the academic level, the project was conducted in collaboration with the CRAN (Centre de Recherches en Automatique de Nancy) and the Education Sciences Department of Nancy 2 University (Brassac et al. 1998; Grégori 1999b)

  19. For a more thorough analysis, see Brassac and Grégori (2000, 2001)

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  1. Équipe CODISANT COgnition DIstribuée dans les Systèmes Artificiels et NaTurels, Laboratoire de Psychologie de l’Interaction (Lab Psy Lor), Université Nancy 2, ICN, Graduate Business School, BP 33-97, 54015, Nancy Cedex, France

    Christian Brassac

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Brassac, C. Computers and knowledge: a dialogical approach. AI & Soc 20, 249–270 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-005-0019-0

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