PERSON
Etienne Wenger
Swiss-born learning theorist (b. 1952) who co-authored Situated Learning with Lave and extended the framework of communities of practice into organizational theory — whose prior doctorate in artificial intelligence gave his critique of computational models of mind its distinctive authority.
Etienne Wenger is a Swiss-born learning theorist and consultant whose career provides one of the sharpest documented transitions from the AI paradigm to the situated-learning paradigm. Wenger completed his doctorate in artificial intelligence at the University of California, Irvine, where he studied the computational model of mind from the inside. He then collaborated with Jean Lave on Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991), and developed the framework further in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity (1998). His subsequent work, including Cultivating Communities of Practice (2002) with Richard McDermott and William Snyder, brought the framework into organizational practice at corporations, government agencies, and educational institutions worldwide.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Wenger's biography is itself instructive for the AI debate. He did not arrive at his critique of computational models of mind through philosophical speculation or humanities-side skepticism. He arrived through situated engagement with the practice of building AI systems — participating in