ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 213 Book Reviews Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design Four Reviews and a Response Every now and then a book about computers and AI sweeps through the community and divides opinion. Some people praise it while others deeply criticize it. The new book by Winograd and Flores is such a book. One of the purposes of this column is to provide a forum for discussion about recently published works. When new books appear to be controversial, we try to present multiple perspectives on them. In this issue there are four independent reviews of Understanding Computers and Cognition. The review- ers bring different backgrounds and concerns to their assessments of the book. To ensure fairness and encourage further dialog and understanding, this column also publishes responses by authors whose works have been reviewed. At the end of this column Winograd and Flores respond. Mark J. Stefik Book Review Editor T. Winograd and F. Flores, Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design (Ablex, Norwood, NJ, 1986); 207 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by: Andr6 Vellino Advanced Computational Methods Center, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602, U.S.A. Introduction The aim of Understanding Computers and Cognition is extremely ambitious. In this book Winograd and Flores attempt to outline a new foundation for the design of computer systems, including, but not limited to AI systems. "The alternative we pose," they write in the introduction, "is an attempt to create a new understanding of how to design computer tools suited to human use and human purposes" (p. 8). A theory of how computers systems should be Artificial Intelligence 31 (1987) 213-261 0004-3702/87/$3.50 © 1987, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)