Cognitive Engineering: Toward a Workable Concept of Mind

Perhaps no one has understood the depth to which the ever-increasing technological nature of the human ecology has shaped psychological theory better than Jerome Bruner. In his memoir In Search of Mind 1983, Bruner shared his reflections on the origins of the cognitive revolution. Although a great many factors may have played a role e.g., Chomsky, 1959 Miller, 1956 Newell Simon, 1972, Bruner turns much conventional thinking on its head, implying that scientists had to invent a theory of mind in response to the practical demands of finding coherent ways of understanding and coordinating a largely invented world of people engaged with post-Industrial Revolution technologies. The seeds of this scientific revolution, it seems, were not so much in the air as in the digital circuitry and in the need to understand and manage a complex world of information.