Man not a machine: Models, minds, and mental labor, c.1980.
Max Stadler
Progress in Brain Research 2017 DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2017.03.001 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Computer metaphor Connectionism Embodied cognition History of science Mental labor |
| Key points | Argues that the "computer metaphor" of the mind, which had dominated post-WW2 cognitive science, dissolved during the 1970s and 1980s as computers entered the workplace and transformed mental labor. In this context, the author contends, minds of computer-equipped brainworkers came to be understood through metaphors of cognition as "parallel," "tacit," and "embodied and embedded" rather than as rule-based symbol processors. |
Abstract
This essay is concerned with the fate of the so-called "computer metaphor" of the mind in the age of mass computing. As such, it is concerned with the ways the mighty metaphor of the rational, rule-based, and serial "information processor," which dominated neurological and psychological theorizing in the early post-WW2 era, came apart during the 1970s and 1980s; and how it was, step by step, replaced by a set of model entities more closely in tune with the significance that was now discerned in certain kinds of "everyday practical action" as the ultimate manifestation of the human mind. By taking a closer look at the ailments and promises of the so-called postindustrial age and more specifically, at the "hazards" associated with the introduction of computers into the workplace, it is shown how models and visions of the mind responded to this new state of affairs. It was in this context-the transformations of mental labor, c.1980-my argument goes, that the minds of men and women revealed themselves to be not so much like computing machines, as the "classic" computer metaphor of the mind, which had birthed the "cognitive revolution" of the 1950s and 1960s, once had it; they were positively unlike them. Instead of "rules" or "symbol manipulation," the minds of computer-equipped brainworkers thus evoked a different set of metaphors: at stake in postindustrial cognition, as this essay argues, was something "parallel," "tacit," and "embodied and embedded."