The Driving Lesson as a Socio-Technical Situation. A Case Study on the Interaction between Learner Driver, Driving Instructor, and the Motor Car
30 Apr 2021-Qualitative sociology review (Uniwersytet Lodzki (University of Lodz))-Vol. 17, Iss: 2, pp 6-21
TL;DR: In this article, a micro-sociological examination of the driving lesson raises the following question: How is the interaction between learner driver and driving instructor structured in this technical setting, and what meaning can be ascribed in this threefold constellation to the vehicle with its various technical elements?
Abstract: A micro-sociological examination of the driving lesson raises the following question: How is the interaction between learner driver and driving instructor structured in this technical setting, and what meaning can be ascribed in this threefold constellation to the vehicle with its various technical elements? This case study examines the orientation patterns which exist between the learner driver, the driving instructor, and the car, which together constitute a socio-technical triangle, and what actions the learner driver needs to learn to enable them to drive the car safely. The theoretical background to the study is provided by interactionist theories, which have been broadened to include a greater sensitivity for the body and technology, and a sociological reading of postphenomenology. Using a method based on this theoretical background and informed by workplace studies, this study observed and made audiovisual recordings of driving lessons. This approach made it possible to undertake a detailed analysis of the situations, reveal how the human body interacts with technology, and how a person’s attention responds to technical information. In these situations, the driving instructor takes on the role of the translator by mediating between various situational definitions—one’s own, that of the inexperienced learner driver, other motorists, and the driver assistance systems in the car. The driving instructor represents the driving school as an institution that is responsible for creating an intersubjectively arranged understanding of how to deal with technology and socio-technical situations.
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TL;DR: In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament, one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature-culture divide is destabilised, and man's privileged status is under attack as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: It can be said that we inhabit a post-human world—an existence characterised by smartphones and social media, genetically modified food and IVF babies, life-extending technologies and prosthetic enhancements. In The Posthuman (2013), Rosi Braidotti offers a roadmap for navigating the global effects of this post-human predicament—one in which clear distinctions between the human and the non-human no longer hold, the nature–culture divide is destabilised, and man’s privileged status is under attack. The situation we find ourselves in, Braidotti argues, is neither dystopian technological nightmare nor futuristic fantasy but one that requires complex and nuanced critical responses to issues of subjectivity, ethics and politics. In the four chapters comprising The Posthuman, Braidotti outlines her vision of the post-human future based on an affirmative politics, which ‘combines critique with creativity in the pursuit of alternative visions and projects’ (54). As a feminist antihumanist, Braidotti expresses little nostalgia for the concept of ‘Man’ and its associated individualism, Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism. Chapter 1 ‘Post-Humanism: Life Beyond the Self’ charts the Humanist/anti-humanist debates to draw attention to the crisis of the human and the opportunity it affords to imagine alternative subjectivities grounded in relationality and the interconnection between the self and others (49). Methodologically, Braidotti adopts a feminist politics of location in her critique of various Humanist traditions. There is a profound reflexivity to her writing as she guides the reader through the intellectual trajectory that has resulted in her nomadic, affirmative politics. It is a legacy that incorporates social movements of the 1960s/1970s, as well as the continental feminism of Irigaray and Kristeva. Spinoza and Deleuze and Guattari also feature as philosophical touchstones from which she advances her vision for the posthuman as a ‘relational subject constituted in and by multiplicity, that is to say a subject that works across differences and is also internally differentiated, but still grounded and accountable’ (49). By framing her argument within the narrative of her own intellectual story, the book conveys an immediacy and intimacy not often found in academic prose. Stylistically, it is as though we are inside her head—a post-human experience, indeed. Her writing is as expansive and impressive as you would expect—a swarm of ideas assuredly curated into a compelling argument for generating new forms of subjectivity and ethical relations to confront the challenges of a post-human existence. Consistent with existing feminist appraisals of the post-human (Halberstam and Livingston 1995; Hayles 1999; Toffoletti 2007), Braidotti acknowledges the complexity of the post-human predicament, seeking alternative frameworks to think about post-human subjectivity in non-dualistic ways. What Braidotti brings to these debates is an emphasis on materialism by way of Spinozist monism. In championing the relational, embodied and embedded qualities of post-human existence, Braidotti reprises the concept of zoe—a generative and vitalist force that allows for connections and affinities to be made across
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TL;DR: In Frame Analysis, the brilliant theorist wrote about the ways in which people determine their answers to the questions What is going on here? and Under what circumstances do we think things are real?.
Abstract: Erving Goffman will influence the thinking and perceptions of generations to come In Frame Analysis, the brilliant theorist writes about the ways in which people determine their answers to the questions What is going on here? and Under what circumstances do we think things are real? "
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TL;DR: Lapham as discussed by the authors re-evaluated McLuhan's work in the light of the technological as well as the political and social changes that have occurred in the last part of this century.
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"The Driving Lesson as a Socio-Techn..." refers methods in this paper
...The concept of “extension” was applied later by McLuhan (1994) for media as “Extensions of Man.”...
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PARC1
TL;DR: This paper presents a meta-modelling architecture for human-machine communication that automates the very labor-intensive and therefore time-heavy and therefore expensive and expensive process of designing and implementing communication systems.
Abstract: Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Interactive artefacts 3. Plans 4. Situated actions 5. Communicative resources 6. Case and methods 7. Human-machine communication 8. Conclusion References Indices.
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TL;DR: It is concluded that problems in Cognitive Science's theorizing about purposeful action as a basis for machine intelligence are due to the project of substituting plans for actions, and representations of the situation of action, for action's actual circumstances.
Abstract: This thesis considers two alternative views of purposeful action and shared understanding. The first, adopted by researchers in Cognitive Science, views the organization and significance of action as derived from plans, which are prerequisite to and prescribe action at whatever level of detail one might imagine. Mutual intelligibility on this view is a matter of the recognizability of plans, due to common conventions for the expression of intent, and common knowledge about typical situations and appropriate actions. The second view, drawn from recent work in social science, treats plans as derivative from situated action. Situated action as such comprises necessarily ad hoc responses to the actions of others and to the contingencies of particular situations. Rather than depend upon the reliable recognition of intent, successful interaction consists in the collaborative production of intelligibility through mutual access to situation resources, and through the detection, repair or exploitation of differences in understanding. As common sense formulations designed to accomodate the unforseeable contingences of situated action, plans are inherently vague. Researchers interested in machine intelligence attempt to remedy the vagueness of plans, to make them the basis for artifacts intended to embody intelligent behavior, including the ability to interact with their human users. The idea that computational artifacts might interact with their users is supported by their reactive, linguistic, and internally opaque properties. Those properties suggest the possibility that computers might 'explain themselves: thereby providing a solution to the problem of conveying the designer's purposes to the user, and a means of establishing the intelligence of the artifact itself. I examine the problem of human-machine communication through a case study of people using a machine designed on the planning model, and intended to be intelligent and interactive~ A conversation analysis of \"interactions\" between users and the machine reveals that the machine's insensitivity to particular circumstances is a central design resource, and a fundamental limitation. I conclude that problems in Cognitive Science's theorizing about purposeful action as a basis for machine intelligence are due to the project of substituting plans for actions, and representations of the situation of action, for action's actual circumstances. XEROX PARe. ISL-6. FEBRLARY 1985
2,485 citations