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Chapter 5
Use of Artefacts
Humans have used artefacts since the invention of cuneiform writing,
but the complexity of present-day computerised artefacts often create
more problems than they solve. Artefacts can be either tools or
prostheses, and the chapter develops these distinctions. While
artefacts (technical or social) ostensibly are introduced to make life
easier for people, the effect sometimes turn out to be the exact
opposite.
INTRODUCTION
Much has been written about the use of tools, in particular the type of tools
that include computers and information technology. Indeed, in discussions in
the human factors/human-machine interaction communities since the early
1980s, the notion of a tool has practically become synonymous with a
computer or something that includes a computer. An illustration of this is
Bødker’s (1996) proposal for a distinction between tool, medium, and
system. According to this, a tool emphasises human involvement with
materials through a computer application, a medium emphasises human
involvement with other human beings through the computer, and a system
emphasises the perspectives of the human user and data exchange with the
compute component. Although the importance of computers for present day
society is hard to underestimate there still are many artefacts that are not
computers or that do not involve computers, but which nevertheless are
worthy of consideration.
Since CSE uses the concept of a tool in a more restrictive sense than
above, the preferred term is an artefact, defined as something made for a
specific purpose. Humans sometimes use natural objects to achieve a goal,
such as when a stone serves as a hammer, and sometimes use artefacts for
purposes they were not made for, e.g., using a fork as a lever to open a bottle
of beer. Depending on how an artefact is used, it may be considered either a
tool or a prosthesis. Computers, and systems including computers, are
certainly artefacts in this sense, but so are bicycles, sewing machines, keys,
94 Joint Cognitive Systems
aeroplanes, the Internet, personal digital assistants (PDA), dishwashers, cars,
photocopiers – the list is endless. Although CSE does not aim to exclude any
artefact, the emphasis is nevertheless on those that have a certain level of
complexity and functionality and which therefore typically – but not
necessarily – comprise some kind of information technology. The interest is,
however, not on the information technology as such but on the function and
use of the artefact.
Phenomenology of Coagency
The extent to which people in the industrialised world have become
dependent on artefacts is easily demonstrated by considering an ordinary day
of work. We wake up in the morning by the sound from an alarm clock. We
go to the bathroom to wash, brush our teeth, and perhaps shave. We put on
clothes and go to the kitchen where breakfast is prepared using microwaves,
stoves, electric kettles, toasters, and the like. We may listen to the radio,
watch the news, or read the paper. We travel to work equipped with various
technological artefacts such as watches, mobile phones, computers, music
players or radios, and journey by means of bicycles, cars, trains, boats, and
buses – except for the fortunate few who live within walking distance. Even
so, no one walks barefoot and naked to work. At work we use a variety of
artefacts and machines and are furthermore surrounded by artefacts in the
form of furniture, lighting, heating, ventilation, and perhaps even monitored
by cameras, movement detectors, and the like – there is hardly any need to
continue. Indeed, it is difficult to think of a single thing that can be done
without the use of some kind of artefact, with the possible exception of a
vegan nudist living in the woods.
Philosophers, such as Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, have
provided the basis for a phenomenology of human-machine relations – of
coagency (Ihde, 1979, p. 3). The basis is a distinction between the
embodiment and hermeneutic relations, described in Chapter 2. In the
embodiment relation, the artefact or machine becomes transparent to the user
so that it is no longer seen or experienced as an object but instead becomes
part of how the world is experienced. A simple example is to write with a
pencil on a piece of paper. In the act of writing the pencil stops being an
object and becomes, for the moment at least, at one with or an embodiment of
the writer. This can also be expressed by saying that there is a transparency
relation between the artefact and the user. The better the artefact is suited for
its purpose, the higher is the transparency. The embodiment relation can be
illustrated as in Figure 5.1. The shaded area indicates that the artefact or
machine is transparent to the person, and that the interface is between the
artefact and the world, rather than between the user and the artefact.
Use of Artefacts 95
World
Artefact /
machine
Person /
human
Figure 5.1: The embodiment relation.
In the embodiment relation the artefact often serves as an amplifier, i.e.,
to strengthen some human capability. The amplification highlights those
aspects of the experience that are germane to the task while simultaneously
reducing or excluding others, all – ideally – controlled by the user. In the
hermeneutic relation, the artefact stands between the person and the world.
Instead of experiencing the world through the artefact, the user experiences
the artefact, which thereby interprets the world for the person.
The hermeneutic relation can be illustrated as in Figure 5.2. The shaded
area indicates that the world is experienced only as the artefact represents it.
The interface is now between the person and the artefact, rather than between
the artefact and the world. (The similarity to the traditional HCI paradigm
described in Chapter 1 is striking.)
Person /
human
World
Artefact /
machine
Figure 5.2: The hermeneutic relation.
In the hermeneutic relation, the artefact serves as an interpreter for the
user and effectively takes care of all communication between the operator
and the application. By virtue of that, the artefact loses its transparency and
becomes something that the user must go through to get to the world. The
interaction in many cases therefore becomes with the artefact rather than with
the application. Put differently, the user has moved from an experience
through the artefact to an experience of the artefact. In the extreme case there
actually is no experience of the process except as provided by the artefact,
which therefore serves as a mediator without the user’s control.
96 Joint Cognitive Systems
Tools and Prostheses
The embodiment and hermeneutic relations are, of course, not mutually
exclusive but rather represent two different ways of viewing the human-
machine ensemble. The distinction between them serves to clarify the nature
of JCSs. It also closely resembles the distinction between using technology as
a tool or as prosthesis. (Tool is a word found in Old English meaning
instrument or implement. Prosthesis comes from Greek and originally means
the addition of a letter or a syllable to a word. It was later defined as an
artificial substitute for a missing part of the body, and in the present context it
means an artefact that takes over an existing function.)
In an insightful analysis of the problems that seemed to be endemic to
work with complex processes, Reason (1988) presented what he termed an
optimistic and a pessimistic view. According to the optimistic view,
technology would bring the solution to its own problems by providing
cognitive tools – described as “felicitous extensions of normal brain-power”
(Reason, 1988, p. 7) – that would enable people to cope with the complexity
and opacity of industrial systems. According to the pessimistic view, the
more likely remedy would be to provide people with cognitive prostheses (or
mental ‘crutches’) that would help to compensate for some of the ‘error’
tendencies that have their root in a mismatch between the properties of the
system as a whole and the characteristics of human information processing. If
this distinction is extended from cognitive or computer-based artefacts to all
types of artefacts, a tool is an artefact (in the widest possible sense) that
enables a cognitive system to go beyond its unaided capabilities without
losing control. Conversely, a prosthesis is an artefact that enables a cognitive
system to do things that were hitherto impossible, but which takes control
away – in whole or in part.
The tool-prosthesis distinction is not absolute and in practice the two
terms are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, any given artefact may have both
tool-like and prosthesis-like qualities, meaning that it sometimes functions as
a tool and sometimes as a prosthesis. Furthermore, the function as either a
tool or a prosthesis may change as the user becomes more experienced. For
the skilled user an artefact may be a tool that can be used in a flexible way to
achieve new goals. For the unskilled or unpractised user, the very same
artefact may be as a prosthesis – something that is necessary to achieve a
goal, but which also makes control more difficult. The artefact works, but the
user does not really understand why and has few possibilities of influencing
it.
Artificial intelligence (AI), as an example of a specialised technological
development, clearly provides the possibility of amplifying the user’s
capabilities, hence to serve as a tool. Yet AI has often been used to enhance
the computer as an interpreter, thereby strengthening its role as a prosthesis.
Use of Artefacts 97
This may happen as a simple consequence of the increasing complexity of the
applications and of the perceived need to provide access to compiled
expertise. The very development of expert systems may thus unknowingly
favour the dominance of the role of the computer as an interpreter (Weir &
Alty, 1989). The development of user support systems and advanced human-
machine system functions should, however, rather aim at amplifying the
capacities of the user.
The tool relation of human-machine interaction means that the computer
is used to strengthen coagency rather than to reduce the environment until it
fits the inherent capacity of putative human information processing
mechanisms. An example would be the use of computers in a process control
environment, such as a chemical plant or a hospital. Here the computer may
assist the operator in monitoring, detection, sequencing, compression,
planning/scheduling, diagnosing, etc. Computers and automation should only
take over these functions to the extent that this can be proven to further the
overall task.
One solution would be to introduce support that is goal directed, i.e.,
where the system is given a goal and then itself finds a way of achieving it.
This will also ensure that the operator remains in control and would differ
radically from designing systems that contain the (top level) goals
themselves, and enforce them on the operator. A system that works by being
given goals corresponds to the delegation of functions that can be observed in
good organisations and in good human cooperation. People are on the whole
better at defining goals than at specifying procedures and better at achieving
goals than at following instructions to the letter. Goal definition requires
creativity and comprehension, the ability to see patterns, etc., all of which
computers are bad at. Generating detailed procedures (prescribing the
solutions to the goals) require massive computations and a meticulous
following of rules, which people notably are bad at.
ARTEFACTS IN CSE
The distinctions between an embodiment and a hermeneutic relation on the
one hand, and a tool and prosthesis perspective on the other, are not quite
identical because they depend on each other. One way of describing the
relationship is as shown in Figure 5.3, which uses the two dimensions of
transparency and exchangeability. A high degree of transparency corresponds
to an embodiment relation and a low to a hermeneutic relation. Similarly, a
high degree of exchangeability corresponds to a prosthetic relation (the
artefacts functions as a prosthesis that can easily be replaced), while a low
corresponds to a tool relation (i.e., the artefact functions as a tool that
amplifies the user’s abilities, thereby becoming an integral part of work).
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