1. Classical Cognition

The appearance of the programmable digital computer was to have significant and long lasting consequences not only for just about every detail of our everyday lives but also for how we thought about our cognition. As we were learning about the power of newly invented information processing devices, it was proposed that the brain could be thought of in similar terms. In short, the brain could be considered to be engaged in human information processing. This chapter describes how this human information processing paradigm was to pervade much of the thinking on how we used interactive technology itself. Cognitive modelling, in a number of different forms, explored how we could both capture the supposed mental processes involved in using interactive technology and use these models to offer insight to the design of usable technology. These initiatives were to introduce ideas such as “mental models” and “affordance” into the human-computer narrative. This chapter concludes with a discussion of why this human information processing approach failed to capture our simple everyday use of interactive technology.