Chuck Grimes:
> I think the answer isn't in the box, for sure. I think the short form
> of an answer is that we have socialized computers--as in raising them
> as if they were social animals, something like domestic pets. We name
> them, think of them as assholes, idiots, or reluctant pack mules,
> burros, bad, slow children.
>
> And I think you're right about mentation, except I would call it
> personification. And it is one of the more basic things we do.
You could personify a rock, but it wouldn't bring you lbo-talk -- or maybe it would. The rocks I run into don't do that, though. They may whisper of the Pleistocene, but they aren't up to mailing lists yet.
A computer -- or a piece of paper with writing on it, or a hammer, even -- all embody (for me, anyway) ideas -- a history of experiences, theories of how we do things, re-presentations of various parts of the world, even aesthetics. A person can pick one up and, never having met or heard of any of the people who made them, differentiate and use them in a way closely corresponding to the ideas of those other persons. So -- as Agre seems to be doing -- we can ask what these ideas are, where they come from, and where they seem to be going. Because they aren't just stuff or the objects of someone's arbitrary construction. They're full of messages -- pointed ones.
Gordon