I agree with Christopher that rapid cognition is “real and useful”, but is not in and of itself gospel and should be “taken with a grain of salt.”  It is finding that right grain of salt that is the most challenging. Christopher further points out that “rapid cognition can be useful given the right preparation” but then he discusses the question of bias.

I believe that bias cannot be avoided, but if it is understood and you understand how it is coloring your perceptions, you are less likely to fall into the trap as experienced in the Bronx shooting of Amadou Diallo.  While it is politically incorrect to even discuss, we must investigate precisely what the biases are, how they are created, and then seek for ways to eradicate them.  I am speaking about negative stereotypical biases, but there is a fine line in our perceptions between archetype and stereotypes.

I also work as an IT worker and so I also use rapid cognition for “quickly analyzing a situation and suggesting a profitable direction of inquiry”  I believe this must be due to the volume of unorganized data that is presented for my attention, so in a sense, my mind is organizing it through previous experience of what has been profitable or not.  I agree that in my scholarly field, I also am hoping that as I read more and work in the field, my thin slicing and rapid cognition will become more profitable.

On the reference to the research by Ekman and Tomkins, I never thought about how the research must have been.  Seven years is a long time, I must have overlooked this in my reading.  I do agree that a lot of our internal state is shown by our faces unintentionally.

I liked Justin’s bifurcated comparison of the age when “Soul of the Machine” was written to the current struggle between Intel and AMD, and also an insight that a machine without a CPU is like a machine without a soul.  This is insightful on two levels, first it makes me think of the famous quote by Plato:

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.  (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/plato169513.html)

The creators of the machine in the book very clearly put something of themselves into the new machine.  On a second level, I am reminded that there are parts that play more important roles than others in a computer, with the CPU being one of the most critical ones.

I agree with Justin that Tracy Kidder had incredible insight as to what consumers expected out of computers - namely simplicity.  I believe that we are on a long road to get back to the point where the next focus in technology is making it useful and simple.  The comparison to the current struggle between AMD and Intel is shows that the world of business and computers is not so different than earlier computer development.

I agreed with Justin that Steve Wallach is probably my favorite character in the book because I also see something of myself in his life.  He knows he likes computers, but he likes more than that and wants to be successful in business also.  This desire for the knowledge in several areas is quite appealing, but often one must make difficult decisions between the highest interests and expediency, which is a frequently difficult trade-off to evaluate.

It seems to me that the vast majority of newer software comes to market before it has been robustly tested and so the feedback agents permit collection of data that can be used to improve the quality of the software.  Perhaps I am overly pessimistic, but I highly doubt whether the designers or maintainers of the current Microsoft systems ever look at the data collected.  I believe that they are rushing to market with the next set of incompletely tested software.

As a database administrator I have seen collection systems for software problems for years and the volume of data that is produced is truly spectacular, but unless it is carefully organized cannot be aggregated to be useful for reference or investigation.  It seems that the time spent by the user entering the feedback might be better utilized restarting their machine, but perhaps may feel utility in communicating with Microsoft about the problems that they have experienced. 

In a perfect world there would be feedback loops that notify you that the issue you have commented about; is a recognized issue, has a name that can be used to refer to it in the future, and finally that if you like you can be notified when a fix is available to resolve the issue encountered.  The fact that the feedback loop is incomplete challenges the notion that we are working on systems of collective knowledge, but at best only with the appearance of cooperative and collective knowledge.