Roger Coe Eddy edited section_Linking_Theory_with_Practice__.tex  over 7 years ago

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\section{Linking Theory with Practice}  The tools described above began from an interdisciplinary discussion of three investigators and local application and refinement of another researcher. The reality of being-in-the-world as humans is deeply personal, dependent on when and where we live, our language, our mentors and life experiences. As we worked together it became apparent to us that we had to work to understand each other even when speaking the same language and using the same words. Our separate disciplines and experiences both separated us and bound us together with a sense of inspiration. The discovery of gaps and differences in in our knowledge and communications between us led to the development of new tools to examine cases of human error. Multiple perspectives allowed us to see biases in customary and even treasured viewpoints. That led to recogniton of how emotion is vitally linked to perspective, values and meaning. Our brains use knowledge to access information, often thru action or anticipation of action.    Why don't things change? Organizations, systems and academic disciplines exist to keep work manageable, their structures intact, and they limit responsibilities to those within and without through language. Internal special language meanings violate common usage, or special terms limit what speech can be used for action. This is out of awareness most of the time for those outside the group or discipline. These limiting usages become apparent when one deviates from the standard behavior, tries to change behavior or simply applies for something using the wrong language. The problem grows directly with the size of the organization or system and increases with the designed rigidity of so-called intelligent systems. Difficult user interfaces and experiences whether by design or accident limit efficiency, efficacy and loyalty. Organizations my use them to increase profit or decrease costs or in medicine to covertly ration services. This could be called \emph{managing by inconvenience.} Misunderstandings increase with the loss of face to face human contact and the decline of a shared language with commonly understood meanings. This is matched by the difficulty of changing the supposed mathematical certainty of a designed process through corrective behavior changes, such as in the recent travails of the mortgage lending industry.