Sormani2023c

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Sormani2023c
BibType INCOLLECTION
Key Sormani2023c
Author(s) Philippe Sormani, Luna Wolter
Title Protocol Subversion: Staging and Stalking “Machine Intelligence” at School
Editor(s) Michael Lynch, Oskar Lindwall
Tag(s) EMCA, Machine Intelligence, School
Publisher Routledge
Year 2023
Language English
City London
Month
Journal
Volume
Number
Pages 259–278
URL Link
DOI 10.4324/9781003279235-18
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title Instructed and Instructive Actions: The Situated Production, Reproduction, and Subversion of Social Order
Chapter

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Abstract

This chapter examines how the notion of “machine intelligence” is (re-)introduced, experimented with, and challenged at school. The chapter takes a closer look at a usability experiment, which was designed to have pupils interact with a “mobile robot” (mobot). It first revisits Turing's circular notion of “machine intelligence,” Wittgenstein's main objections to it, and the mobot as a demonstrator device of its arguable incoherence. The device showcases “synthetic psychology” a priori and with it the conceptual confusion between two ordinarily incompatible frames: mechanical operation and intentional conduct. What happens to the demonstrator device, and its arguable incoherence in particular, when experimentally tested at school? The bulk of the chapter addresses that question by examining “protocol subversion” in and of the usability experiment. We examine its playful subversion by a lively group of pupils, as they not only set up an alternative experiment and give themselves new tasks but also mock “machine intelligence” as a starting assumption and pedagogical requirement in situ. In the concluding remarks, we revisit the chapter's findings on “conceptual change” ad hoc – in and across classroom interaction, if not computer science history – in the light of Garfinkel's notion of “instructed action” as an achieved phenomenon.

Notes