What can humans do? What can machines do? How do humans delegate
actions to machines? In this book, Harry Collins and Martin Kusch
combine insights from sociology and philosophy to provide a novel
answer to these increasingly important questions.The authors begin
by distinguishing between two basic types of intentional behavior,
which they call polimorphic actions and mimeomorphic actions.
Polimorphic actions (such as writing a love letter) are ones that
community members expect to vary with social context. Mimeomorphic
actions (such a swinging a golf club) do not vary. Although
machines cannot act, they can mimic mimeomorphic actions.
Mimeomorphic actions are thus the crucial link between what humans
can do and what machines can do.Following a presentation of their
detailed categorization of actions, the authors apply their
approach to a broad range of human-machine interactions and to
learning. Key examples include bicycle riding and the many
varieties of writing machines. They also show how their theory can
be used to explain the operation of organizations such as
restaurants and armies. Finally, they look at a historical case-the
technological development of the air pump-applying their
categorization of actions to the processes of mechanization and
automation. Automation, they argue, can occur only where what we
want to bring about can be brought about through mimeomorphic
action.
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