Editing Fernando Flores (section)

==Biography==
Flores was born in [[Talca]], [[Chile]]. He became finance minister in the government of Chilean president [[Salvador Allende]] and then spent three years as a [[political prisoner]] (from September 11, 1973 to 1976) after the military coup of General [[Augusto Pinochet]]. Subsequently, forced into exile after negotiations on his behalf by [[Amnesty International]], he moved with his family to [[Palo Alto]], California, and worked as a researcher in the Computer Science department at [[Stanford University]]. 

Flores "had spent his prison years reading philosophy books smuggled in by friends and family, and emerged steeped in phenomenology, the study of the structures of experience and consciousness."<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Fisher |first=Lawrence M. |title=Siri, Who Is Terry Winograd? |url=https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Siri-Who-Is-Terry-Winograd |access-date=2024-12-13 |website=Strategy+business |language=en-us}}</ref> While at Stanford Flores met and began a long collaboration with [[Terry Winograd]]. He subsequently obtained his PhD at [[UC Berkeley]] under the guidance of [[Hubert Dreyfus]], [[Stuart Dreyfus]], [[John Searle]] and Ann Markussen.  

At Berkeley he developed his work on philosophy, coaching and [[workflow]] technology, influenced by [[Martin Heidegger]], [[Humberto Maturana]], [[J. L. Austin|John Austin]] and others. Flores's thesis was titled ''Management and Communication in the Office of the Future.'' 

Winograd has said that when he met Flores, "his life changed."<ref name=":3" /> Conversations with Flores helped to convince Winograd that the AI research of the time ([[Symbolic artificial intelligence|symbolic AI]], or [[GOFAI]]) was based in a faulty understanding of the nature of cognition.<ref name=":3" /> Winograd's own [[SHRDLU|pathbreaking earlier research]] was included within the scope of this critique. These conversations between Winograd and Flores led to work on a manuscript that would become their co-authored book, ''Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation For Design''.<ref name=":2" />