Artefactual Intelligence: The Development and Use of Cognitively Congenial Artefacts (review)

Comprising five previously published papers and an introduction, David de Léon's Artefactual Intelligence brings together a series of complementary analyses of the role of material culture in facilitating human accomplishment. De Léon frames his research by means of a series of theoretical constructs that refer in various ways to efficacy. "Artefactual intelligence" is a measure of fit among instruments, persons, and procedures taken together as an operational system; the same expression refers to the crystallization of knowledge and experience in material forms. "Cognitive congeniality" is an assessment of the influence of an artifact on mental and procedural structures. "Distributed cognition" refers to flows of information among people, artifacts, and spatial arrangements, an ecology of human achievement.

De Léon argues for a focus on temporal dimensions of performance, highlighting situational, biographical, and historical vantage points selectively. His opening commitment to individuals performing routine tasks is overstated, however, for it obscures the contributions of his volume to interactional dynamics, the grounding of human activity in sociocultural formations. The book can be read with social as well as individual processes in mind.

The first chapter is an ethnography that highlights the sequencing of activities for preparing a meal: trade-offs among plans, strategies and emergent contingencies, and the role of visible storage and placement in facilitating operations. De Léon sees changes in physical environments for cooking as reflections of routine practices. He is particularly insightful in his attention to the role of clocks as reminders for coarticulating multiple tasks rather than as absolute timing devices. That this chapter comes first is important in emphasizing the value of ethnography for the study of cognition. Further detailing the cultural community of the participants and noting practitioners' standards of evaluation would enrich the ethnographic contribution, while comparative attention to other studies of food preparation would offer a productive way to build on the analysis.

The second chapter offers a series of schematic representations of transformative possibilities in the integration of artifacts, mental operations, and procedures for the accomplishment of tasks. De Léon illustrates these potential reconfigurations with brief references to relevant literatures. His scenarios raise important questions about the redefinition of tasks in conjunction with alterations in material accouterments. Also at issue, though not explicitly addressed, are implications for skilled versus unskilled production that might influence transformations in technology. What is most helpful here is the inventory of abstract possibilities as interpretive anchors for histories of technology and ethnographies of production.

The third chapter investigates the development of emergent designs for a spice rack over a period of roughly three decades in one individual's life. This study offers insights into the mutual influences of practice, design, and knowledge that would be inaccessible by almost any other approach. The procedure is reconstructive rather than longitudinal, and, as de Léon notes, may thereby smooth over transitional processes. Nonetheless, this analysis adds a valuable temporal dimension to studies of situated cognition and provides a model for future research.

The fourth chapter retraces the historical development of the rifle, scrutinizing design transformations in light of cognitive and procedural consequences. De Léon clearly demonstrates the integrative properties of task-artifact cycles, and he questions K. B. Bærentsen's notion of building thought or practice into things by shifting the focus of study to coordination across mental, embodied, and material components of tasks. De Léon's emphasis on open-ended possibilities for change over time helps avoid simplistic or deterministic interpretations. A practitioner's gaze, that of designer or user, would add to the foundation laid by de Léon. Wider connections to the historiography of technology would better clarify the place of this contribution.

The final chapter diverges from the first four. Here, de Léon seeks to extend the distributed cognition framework to motivation. Though provocative and challenging in principle, he discusses conditions for self-monitoring impressionistically, without a foundation in ethnography. Ethical and moral implications are skirted, and...