E42: The offloaded brain, part 2: applications
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Description
Suppose you believed that the ecological/embodied cognitive scientists of last episode had a better grasp on cognition than does our habitual position that the brain is a computer, passively perceiving the environment, then directing the body to perform steps in calculated plans. If so, technical practices like test-driven design, refactoring in response to "code smells," and the early-this-century fad for physical 3x5 cards might make more sense. I explain how. I also sketch how people might use such ideas when designing their workplace and workflow. Books I drew upon Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again, 1997 Alva Noë, Action in Perception, 2005 Also mentioned Gary Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, 1998 I mentioned a session of the Simple Design and Test conference. The sociology book I contributed to: The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming, 2009, edited by Andrew Pickering and Keith Guzik. My chapter, "A Manglish Way of Working: Agile Software Development", is inexplicably available without a paywall. The MIT AI Lab Jargon File I believe the original publication about CRC cards is Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham, "A laboratory for teaching object oriented thinking", 1989. I also believe the first book-type description was in Rebecca Wirfs-Brock et. al., Designing Object-Oriented Software, 1990.  The idea of "flow" was first popularized in Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's 1990 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.  The idea of the hedgehog and the fox was popularized by Isaiah Berlin in his 1953 book The Hedgehog and the Fox (a wikipedia link). The original developer of the Pomodoro technique describes it here. There was a book about it, but Goodreads has been sufficiently enshittified that I can't find it. Perhaps you might be interested in Reduce PTSD and Depression Symptoms in 21 Days Using the Pomodoro Method instead? Because Goodreads prefers that. The Boy Who Cried World (wikipedia) CreditsI was helped by Steve Doubleday, Ron Jeffries, and Ted M. Young.  I took the picture of Dawn in the tango close embrace.
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