Performance as language of social interaction
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
The division
of labor mandated in Sea and Anchor Detail distributes the elements of the fix
cycle across social space. Wherever computations are distributed across social
organization, computational dependencies are also social dependencies .
Performance is embedded in real human relationships . Every action is not only
a piece of the computation , a bit of the task completed ; it is also a social
message. Building and maintaining good social relationships becomes an
important motive for competent performance .
The social
structure is not only the framework on which the communication is based, it is
also the mechanism that is in place prior to the interactions to ensure that
they take place as required .
Why should
the pelorus operator cooperate? Because adequate performance is the currency of
social interaction .
A student
was making a point about what people do at work, saying that in an auto factory
people mostly make cars. Roy said something like: "How do you know what
they are doing? Maybe what they are making is social relationships and the cars
are a side effect."
