The Computational Mind and the Digitized Society: A Question of Rules

Information technology has allowed us to organize and coordinate actions to a degree unimaginable even a few decades ago—think of the man on the moon program— and to understand the rational workings of the human mind—think of Chomsky’s account of language as the product of rules and representations. I examine both of these ventures in terms of the increasing rationality of thought and action and the increasing rationality of social organization—the attempt to make both subject to explicit rules. I begin by commenting briefly on five domains where rules have a conspicuous place before advancing my arguments connecting rules, whether psychological or social, and literacy.