Abstract
The “situated” perspective in the analysis and design of socio-technical systems reveals how people conceive of activities as social-interactive settings, thus relating situated cognition to themes in the philosophy of place. In the socio-technical approach to developing technology, social scientists and computer scientists ground designs of automation (e.g., software, devices, vehicles) in ethnographic studies of how people interact with each other, tools and representations (e.g., computer displays), and their environment (e.g., facilities). These studies characterize people’s activities – how they conceive of what they are doing in particular settings. A person’s understanding of activities that a physical location affords for certain socio-technical purposes – the spatial conception of activities – makes a location a meaningful place. Technical knowledge and methods (“what I am doing now”), personal identity (“who I am being now”), and behavior norms (e.g., “how well I am doing now”) co-develop in the activity setting. This paper elucidates the multi-dimensional physical, conceptual, and interactive nature of settings with examples from ethnographic studies of robotically mediated field science on Mars and analog expeditions on Earth. The felt and aesthetic experience of being in places that are Mars-like and working on Mars itself further reveals the emotional aspect of cognition that motivates and orients scientific work, exploration, and associated artistic expressions.
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Notes
- 1.
We can view “setting” in workplace studies as an etic term (a structural, conceptual distinction of the people in the culture being studied, which may or may not be in their lexicon), and “place” as an emic term (an analytic, culturally general distinction, named and often graphically related to other places as in a map). In human culture the place–setting distinction blends; for example, constructed (e.g., buildings, plazas) and natural places (e.g., lakes, mountains) alike are known as both physical places and cultural settings for activities. Of particular interest are settings in which only certain people are allowed to participate and activities are circumscribed, such as the settings related to Mars field science discussed in this chapter.
- 2.
Affordances are dynamic relations among a physical place/thing and the intentions and behavioral capabilities of actors; they are not properties that reside in either the place/thing or the actor. Other examples: the upper bunk of the stateroom affords sleeping and being used as a standing desk; the table affords seating for six people at meals or four people using computers.
- 3.
The image has been white-balanced to show what the Martian surface materials would look like if under the sunlight of Earth’s sky.
- 4.
From “Rationale – Situatedness and Place.” Cf. also the Preface of this volume.
- 5.
For a related description of expeditions as liminal experiences see Clancey (2012, Chapter 9), particularly the references to Martin Rudwick’s analysis.
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Clancey, W.J. (2018). Spatial Conception of Activities: Settings, Identity, and Felt Experience. In: Hünefeldt, T., Schlitte, A. (eds) Situatedness and Place. Contributions To Phenomenology, vol 95. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92937-8_6
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