Status Updates From Computation and Human Exper...

It takes 250 pages, but Agre does finally plant his flag in the ground, “The kind of generality projected by current AI practice (representation as expression, thought as search, planning as simulation) simply cannot be realized. Every artifact or organism of any complexity relies heavily, by computational necessity, on the regularity and coherence of its familiar world.”

An essential distinction in Computer Science: a precise language vs. a natural language: "My reflexive thesis is that predictable forms of trouble will beset any technical community that supposes its language to be precise and formally well defined. Awareness of the rhetorical properties of technical language greatly facilitates the interpretation of difficulties encountered in everyday technical practice."

"It is well known that a technical method can be perfectly well defined and perform exactly according to its specification, while at the same time being as wrongheaded as you like." Something that programmers too often forget.

I like the discussion of the history of computing and philosophy and the choice of a mentalist model, but I'm still waiting for the details of the alternative, interactionist view of computing.

The preface and first chapter speak to more than perhaps any academic or technical book ever has.