Cognitive Engineering: Toward a Workable Concept of Mind It
seems plain to me now that the “cognitive revolution” … was a
response to the technologi- cal demands of the Post-Industrial
Revolution. You cannot properly conceive of managing a complex
world of information without a workable concept of mind. —Bruner
(1983, p. 63) Perhaps no one has understood the depth to which
the ever-increasing technological nature of the human ecology
has shaped psychological theory better than Jerome Bruner. In
his memoir In Search of Mind (1983), Bruner shared his
reflections on the origins of the cognitive revolution. Although
a great many factors may have played a role (e.g., Chomsky,
1959; Miller, 1956; Newell & Simon, 1972), Bruner turns much
conventional thinking on its head, implying that scientists had
to invent a theory of mind in response to the practical demands
of finding coherent ways of understanding and coordinating a
largely invented world of people engaged with post–Industrial
Revolution technologies. The see