Cotton was trying to snap it together with some larger part. From this 
Hackworth inferred that the auto-assembly process (which Cotton would have 
tried first) hadn't worked quite right, and so now Cotton was trying to 
maneuver the part into place by hand. This wouldn't fix what was wrong with it, 
but the telæsthetic feedback coming into his hand through those wires 
would give him insight as to which bumps were lining up with which holes and 
which weren't. It was an intuitive approach to the job, a practice furiously 
proscribed by the lecturers at the Royal Nanotechnological Institute but 
popular among Hackworth's naughty, clever colleagues.