Outsiders’ approach and their interesting viewpoints

From the readings of this week, I find outsiders’ approach to a strange domain as well as their viewpoints of such domain very interesting. Though the authors of the two articles might actually be experts in the fields where they acted as observers, they did depict different kinds of pictures from those seen by insiders.

When stepped into a strange world – Artificial Intelligence (AI), Forsythe kept comparing the unfamiliar fascinating things she observed in AI with the things that an anthropologist was familiar with. She tried to understand how those AI people translate knowledge into computer language, which seemed very weird and challenging from an anthropologist’s point of view. By observation and comparison, she got some very interesting results. For example, she was skeptical about the self-definition as scientists by AI people, and argued that their performances were more like engineers’. Also, she described the way in which AI people thought about knowledge as “I am the world” reasoning, which might never be aware of by the AI researchers as they talked about what knowledge was.

Different from Forsythe’s approach to a new domain that mainly use comparison, Latour and Woolgar tried to refine their understanding of what scientists were doing in the laboratory by asking questions and seeking for answers. Though the questions might seem ignorant to the lab people, they were helpful tools for outsiders to think, to investigate and to be familiar with the strange world. In this process, the observers gradually realized the important “product” that all scientists in the laboratory were working on – articles to be hopefully published in scientific journals. The observers conceived the laboratory equipment to be devices that produced literature, and the scientists were manufacturers of such products. I think the scientists would be amazed by this factory-like description of their daily work.

I think the outsider’s point of view is indispensible in refining a specific domain. Though the insiders may be more familiar with the particulars and culture and knows what’s going on, they might be too close to the situation to see the forest for the trees. For outsiders, they have no stake in the situation, so they could give more objective judgments and offer dramatically different viewpoints that help insider clarify the situation. As was mentioned in Forsythe’s article, the AI people were unaware of the static and narrow view of knowledge they held, which seemed so obvious in an anthropologist’s point of view. The recommendation that AI people should step out of the situation to think about knowledge in different ways would finally help the insiders to meet their own goals.

In the domains of both engineering and education, I’m still an outsider. I find myself approaching the two new domains in a way very similar to that of Forsythe’s – comparing knowledge in the new field with my original background knowledge and try to figure out something different (as could be seen in one of my post http://ene-hp-f10.blogspot.com/2010/09/differences-between-engineer-and.html). By comparison, I'm able to add some unique characters to the new field to help me learn more about the situation. But at this time, I really wish to be an insider to enjoy the moment when outsiders share their amazing viewpoints with me.