Turkle, S., & Papert, S. (1991). Epistemological pluralism and the
revaluation of the concrete. In I. Harel & S. Papert (Eds.).
Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.  Reviewed by Lorraine Sherry
 
Why are women reluctant to enter the fields of computing, science, 
and engineering? Surprisingly, there isn't an invariable relationship 
between gender and reluctance. Rather, there's a correlation between 
gender and epistemology. It's the difference between the "hard", typically 
masculine, analytic approach toward knowledge and the "soft", typically 
feminine approach that values everyday thinking. The hard approach is 
characterized by an abstract, structured, plan-oriented, rule-driven 
style. The soft approach relies on situated cognition, bottom-up 
thinking, and the "revaluation of the concrete". It's illustrated by two 
subjects in this study who prefer to play with the elements of a computer 
program and move them around as if they were material objects. It starts 
in childhood, where children form either a close or distant relationship 
to the objects that surround them. The tendency to use abstract/analytic 
or concrete/negotiational style develops later.
 
While a structured programmer starts with a clear plan defined in
abstract terms, children who use the soft approach, like Alex and Anne,
prefer to let the product emerge through a negotiation between themselves
and their material.  "The computer is an expressive medium that different
people can make their own in their own way" (p. 165, sentence in italics). 
As the Logo language enabled these children to program in the styles that
best fit their thinking, so the persistence of the Macintosh computer
itself, in spite of tremendous market pressures, enables those computer
users who prefer the soft approach to choose a machine that fits their
thinking.  Conversely, those who prefer the hard approach feel that the
IBM affords a thinking environment that fits.  And so, the heated Mac vs.
IBM argument persists, pitting those who prefer desktops and icons against
those who prefer the hierarachical structure of trees and subdirectories. 
From the authors' perspective, "what is important is that the iconic
victories are part of a larger cultural shift towards an acceptance of
concrete, relational ways of thinking" (p. 187). 
 
A computer that can bring the abstract down to the concrete makes a 
dramatic statement for pluralism. It can be an expressive medium for 
personal styles, and a carrier for pluralistic ideas. Human-Computer 
Interface (HCI) designers must be on guard against the resistance of our 
intellectual culture to the soft approach, and facilitate them both--else 
we will continue to support the notion of an epistemological elite.  

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