From mhager@umich.edu Mon Mar 17 16:22:43 1997 Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 15:36:24 -0500 (EST) From: Mark James Hager <mhager@umich.edu> To: psych765.list@umich.edu Subject: Cognition in the Wild Hutchins and Suchman A Synthesis and another example To begin this review, I must admit to a miscalculation. I read the Hutchins chapters before the Suchman paper. In her case study "Centers of Coordination" Lucy Suchman provided a grand scheme within which to view cognition in the wild. She proposed several themes that, on review, were most helpful in understanding and organizing Hutchins' chapters as more than a good story, which I found them to be. In defining what the characteristics of a center of coordination are, Suchman created a template for Hutchins and for my own research after reading Hutchins. I say research because I found Hutchins chapters to be informative from a personal side. My father spent three years stationed on an aircraft carrier in the San Diego Harbor, and I interviewed him to understand one person's perspective from the inside of such a center of coordination. I shared the topic of Hutchins' book with him, and then I asked him to reflect on his own experience as it fit into Suchman's themes of: acquiring competency, access to knowledge and technology, relations between professional design and design in use, divisions of labor, apprenticeship, meanings of technology in use, the constitution of workspaces, a naval identity, knowing theory vs. practice. To begin with, I told him about the stopping of the carrier without its steam power, and he related a story where navigation teams routinely dock carriers without regular power. In the Port of Yokuska, Japan, unusual currents, sea conditions, and harbor configurations required that the standard approach be a "pinwheel" without the usual steam power. The crew would line up the jets on both the fantail and the bow so that they made a pinwheel formation. After they were securely tied down, they were commanded to rev the engines. This propelled the ship in a pinwheel motion, spinning at about 2-3 mph and it proceeded into the harbor. I then asked him about the themes listed by Suchman and developed by Hutchins. I was particularly interested in his perceptions of the division of labor and the various workspaces involved in each maneuver. He first described the launch of aircraft from the flight deck. The Flight Officer begins by taking the directions of wind across the bow of the ship. If the wind directions are safe for launch, he gives the OK to launch the aircraft. The Flight Officer gives the command to bring aircraft onto the launch catapult (the "cat"). The Deck Crew hook the aircraft to the "cat" with riggings. Then a "Safety Officer" (a nominal and not official title) checks the riggings and tells the catapult operator, located on the starboard side in a well with just his head and shoulders showing, that all is safe for launch. The cat operator brings steam pressure into the cat and then gives a "thumbs up" gesture to the launch officer when the pressure is the correct level for the type of aircraft. The launch officer then "gives a whirly" (a gesture circling his hands over his head) indicating to the pilot and all others for the pilot to rev the engines or the jets of the aircraft. The pilot then gives the launch officer the thumbs up when the proper RPM is hit, building thrust for launch. Then the launch officer, visible to both the pilot and the cat operator, drops to one knee and throws his hand forward pointing directly to the bow. On this signal the cat operator releases the catapult and the pilot takes off. After he told me about this, he was surprised to remember so much because these weren't his official duties, but they were instrumental to the performance of the carrier. As Fire Control Technician he was responsible for "locking on" to enemy aircraft or ships with the ship's radar and computers in preparation of the "Fire" command. In the instance of a ship or aircraft sighting, the Combat Plot Control Officer takes commands from the radar operators much as the Navigation Officer recommends directions to the Chief. The radar operators' main job is "to pick up bogies, targets, out there." The combat officer decides which Gun Director will take charge of a the target with the command "52 bogey @ ____ bearing." The gun director (located on level 07, above the conn and far above the water) decides whether to search for the target manually or to use radar. If the target is a ship, visual reckoning may be more accurate because of the slow movement of ships and the possibility that radar may be distorted by water. However aircraft are better tracked by radar because of their speed and agility. If the gun director chooses radar, he uses feedback from the radar operators in the main battery plot, 7 or 8 decks below sea level. Then the gun director gives the command to "lock on" the radar onto the target. The control officer of the gun director simultaneously sends a "locked on" signal both to the computers in the main battery plot so that they will show the fire control technicians that radar is locked on the target and to Combat Control. Then the combat control office decides which gun mounts to use with the command "Gun mount 52. Handle" delivered simultaneously to the gun mount and to the main battery plot. In the main battery plot, the officer in charge, often a chief petty officer, throws the switches on the bulkhead that allow all commands from the gun director to go right through to the gun mounts. The combat control officer will next order "Gun mount #52. Your target." Two enlisted men, a pointer and a trainer, are stationed on the gun mounts. The pointer swings the gun to match compass indications on his dials with where the gun director says to point. The trainer brings the gun barrel up or down to the called level. The pointer and the trainer then call "Automatic" into their headsets connected to all involved and to the magazines for loading the explosives. All control now moves to the gun director as far as movement of the gun mount tracking the target. The combat control officer decides when and whether to fire on the target with an "FFI" inquiry (Friend or Foe Information). At this point the target may send out a radar pulse indicating friendly craft. If he decides to fire, he issues the command "Commence Fire." The load handler loads shells into the breach of the gun, and the pointer pulls the trigger. After he'd finished outlining these typical examples, Dad commented on the division of labor amongst the various actors and about the training they each receive. For himself, he received boot camp, "indoctrination into how to follow orders," and 32 weeks of specialized training before his assignment. Until he went aboard the carrier, he knew nothing about the guns practically, only in theory, but he was trained to control them. He finally worked with the guns directly when he spent three nights aligning bores' sites to celestial markers, the moon or particular stars, with the gun director to prepare the guns and give them the same visual perspectives as the gun director's. The division of labor never struck him until he was telling me the story of this routine firing command. We counted 10 separate job classifications with vastly differing knowledge of the technologies in use, in a workspace constituted over 14 levels, spread out from the gun director 7 decks above the flight deck to the main battery plot 7 levels below sea level. Yet they communicated in a very synchronous fashion. They shared the culture of the carrier community both in spoken discourse: Bogey. Automatic. FFI. Handle. Cat. And in visual signals: Thumbs up. Gives a whirly. Dropping to one knee. Dad's story also brings up an issue for me in Hutchins' chapters. What is missing from these two chapters, and I admit it may be present in the other chapters, is the voice of the sailors as they made sense and meaning of their duties. While Hutchins presents an outsider's perspective on the activities of the organization, Dad's relation of the process of a firing command brings out the synthesis that one individual makes of the cognitive activities of the whole, underlining the place of the individual in the organization and of the individual's very necessary sense of place in the chain of command and operations. His awareness of the vast space over which he was communicating was highlighted when he told me about the necessity of the wireless headsets they used to volley communications around to all the necessary personnel, headsets whose meaning was inseparable from the activities of their use and the activities of the carrier and the well-being of those aboard. Mark J. Hager Combined Program in Education & Psychology mhager@umich.edu </PLAINTEXT> </BODY>