introduction of digital technologies. One emergent conclusion is that mathematics and
technology cannot be seen as disjoint and the role of technology cannot even be
reduced to conversions between representational systems (Artigue & Bardini, 2010).
In the same vein, Borba and Villarreal (2005) argue that the processes mediated by
technologies lead to a reorganization of the human mind itself: knowledge is an
outcome of a symbiosis of humans and technology – a new entity they named
humans-with-media. This concept also discloses a sociocultural perspective of the
human mind, in the sense proposed by Wertsch (1991) when assuming that every
“action is mediated and (…) cannot be separated from the milieu in which it is carried
out” (p. 18). The notion of humans-with-media is supported by two main ideas: (i)
cognition has a social and collective nature that (ii) comprises tools which mediate the
production of knowledge. The key issue is that media are considered a constitutive part
of the subject and cannot be seen as auxiliary or supplementary. The media that are
used to communicate, to produce or represent mathematical ideas, influence the kind of
mathematics as well as of mathematical thinking that is developed. This means that
different collectives of humans-with-media originate different thinking: for instance,
the mathematics produced by humans-with-paper-and-pencil is qualitatively different
from that produced by humans-with-computers (Borba & Villarreal, 2005).