Abstract
This chapter wants to go back to the emergence of space and knowledge in human discourse and to their inextricable links to understand what happens to them with ICT.
In doing so, it adopts a phenomenological stance from which it emerges with great clarity that knowing is deeply grounded on space. From this viewpoint, knowledge is what links words and space coupling distinctions and sense making, so that words give sense to human actions and, conversely, actions give sense to human words. Even when it assumes highly abstract forms, knowledge cannot be liberated from its spatial ground: even when our discourse becomes abstract, in fact, it creates in metaphorical terms a new virtual space as its necessary counterpart. Knowledge is situated in space, time and human experience and it is at the level of situatedness that ICT systems can augment the capability to act and interact. Human-centered design, interaction design and situated computing are the three lessons we must combine in order to do it.
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Notes
- 1.
We use here ‘distinction’ in a way that has much in common with the way Jean Piaget uses it (1964), even if we assume a more radical phenomenological viewpoint: perception and interaction are for us bound each other in an indissoluble way. We are not interested, instead, in the formal treatment of distinctions proposed, e.g., by George Spencer Brown (1972). Niklas Luhmann (2002) is also using ‘distinction’ in his social theory; his reference is to Spencer Brown’s logical treatment of it, and, therefore, we do not need to discuss it here.
- 2.
The reader could ask: why not considering time at this point? Without discussing this issue, let me say that time is not a primitive concept and that its ‘distinction’ is not immediate.
- 3.
The reader should note that here ‘appropriation’ does not pre-suppose the existence of the space that we appropriate: space emergence and its appropriation are contemporary events developing in the interplay between actions and perceptions on one part and discourse on the other.
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- 7.
This paper is not the right place to discuss this issue: let us take it as a reasonable hypothesis on the base of some evidences human beings share while participating in social computing systems like Facebook and Twitter.
- 8.
Again, without opening a discussion going beyond the scope of this paper, the reader can consider how rooms of any type are always more shaped by the information displayed on the screens hanging at their walls.
- 9.
Understanding what is happening in the European cities, for example, cannot be performed only observing how the distribution of the inhabitants is changing within metropolitan areas, using the standard labor market classification. Rather it is necessary, in my opinion, to redefine the labor market in order to capture how work practice and human experience is changing.
- 10.
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Acknowledgements
The thoughts presented in this paper are some of the outcomes of many multidisciplinary conversations I am involved in with colleagues in computer science and information systems, architects and designers, social scientists and anthropologists and, naturally, philosophers. I am indebted to all of them even if the responsibility of what I have written is only mine. A particular thank goes to the editors of this book, whose stimulating review helped to make the paper more clear and complete. Moreover, Andreas’ careful editing of my paper improved its readability.
I hope that readers will find this text a stimulating reflection on several issues we often assume established and without questions. Enlarging the number of reflective practitioners in these years of big changes is my only objective.
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De Michelis, G. (2016). Why Knowledge Is Linked to Space. In: Cusinato, A., Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, A. (eds) Knowledge-creating Milieus in Europe. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45173-7_3
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