Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design

Winograd built SHRDLU, one of the most celebrated early natural-language AI systems, and then wrote this book to explain why the entire approach was wrong. Drawing on Heidegger's phenomenology, Maturana's biology of cognition, and Austin's speech-act theory, Winograd and Flores argued that computers cannot understand language because understanding is not computation — it is a form of being in the world. The book directly influenced the design of Lotus Notes and the concept of workflow software as coordination tools rather than knowledge processors. For product people working with AI today, the arguments remain disturbingly relevant: the gap between pattern matching and genuine understanding that Winograd identified in 1986 has not been closed, only papered over with more data. This is the rare work where a technologist dismantles his own achievement to build something more honest.