2. Implementing activity theory.

Activity theory (AT) is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N. Leont'ev (1903-1979), and Sergei Rubinshtein (1889–1960), who sought to understand human activities as complex, socially situated phenomena and go beyond paradigms of cognition,psychoanalysis and behaviorism. (Wikipeadia)

Its based mainly on Marx theories on human and social interactions with the uses of tools provided by society. The main characteristics for activity theory are:

- subject

- object

- tools

- rules

- motive

- goal

- outcome

During the technology development scientist also started to apply the same theory with similar components to study the Human-Computer reactions as the popularity of the use of computers are formulated the same kind of virtual society what we experience in real life. It describes the environment and interactions between humans while the main tool for uses is a computer. It helps to study the complexity of behaviorism in contemporary systems as schools, libraries, etc. 

The main idea and focus behind this theory is to the interaction and mediated human activity through tools towards a goal that finally transforms into outcome. The tool itself can be anything used during the transformation. It can be either physical nor something used thinking. For example if a student writes an essay as a homework analyzing Marxist theories in USSR. Then the student is a subject that has previously affected by his teacher (also a subject) through interaction in a classroom. The student uses several tools for writing the paper - computer, published works, printer, etc. to work towards the object(goal) - analyze  Marxist theories as good as possible. The object is transformed to an outcome through the teachers view and judgement. This is a simple demonstration of AT in everyday life. 

The theory application becomes more complex to Human-Computer interaction as we would take the same situation, but would exclude the physical teacher as one of the subjects and would replace him with internet - both stand for social influence, but one is relatively more regulated than the other one. For example, if the same student would have to write the same essay based on independent research without any previous directing then the outcome could be very different, because internet gives you as much information as one can manage to look, without regulated if the information is false or not. The classical system for this would be user-created database Wikipedia. One should not take the information given there as the full truth while not making sure if the references given there match with the information written in the article. 

Although I understand the arguments given for and against for applying activity theory, then in a contemporary fast developing society the key elements and their functions are changing. Perhaps even faster to start applying to them previously known theories as they are not looking ahead to describe the future behaviorism.