Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 alpha 4/15/85; site ubvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!talcott!panda!genrad!decvax!decwrl!greipa!pesnta!amd!amdcad!cae780!ubvax!tonyw From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) Newsgroups: net.books Subject: Re: Technology, Literature, Scientists, and Engineers Message-ID: <182@ubvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 29-May-85 17:54:12 EDT Article-I.D.: ubvax.182 Posted: Wed May 29 17:54:12 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 2-Jun-85 07:44:19 EDT References: <270@unc.UUCP> Reply-To: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) Distribution: net Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, Ca. Lines: 39 The question of what books, music, etc. to feature in a course on technology, society, and people is a really great question!! Thanks, sue brunkow. My suggestion for the list is a book by (?) Luria, the Soviet psychologist, called "Cognitive Development". (MIT Press, I recall). He's most famous in the US for a book called "The Mind of a Mnemonist", about a man with perfect memory who had become lost in it. "Cognitive development" is an account of field work Luria did in the USSR during its huge literacy campaign of the 1930's. He shows diagnostically, by asking just the right questions and probing people's responses (a lesson for survey researchers today), that tremendous changes take place in how people see their world, the structures they see which they couldn't see before, when they are introduced to new concepts, shapes, and forms of organization. At that time, many peasants had never seen a book or educated people before. They had no concept of "circle", "oval", "round", etc. They thought a circle was some kind of cup or bowl. And their appreciation of more abstract concepts was linked to the opportunity to deal with more general responsibilities, like leading a group or dealing with a larger bureaucracy. An important point of the book is that people's cognitive development changes and adapts to new social responsibilities. So if you change society to require more abstract thinking, more abstract thinking will develop in people who fill the new roles. Luria's work doesn't show that if society is changed to require less abstract thinking, then people will change and become more provincial and concrete. Maybe that would take a change of generations. The first thing a course on technology and society should show is how technology changes people. The Luria book is a great example of a moment in history where many people suddenly changed. Tony Wuersch {amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw