Distributed Cognition and

The Social Web

Brynn M. Evans Reboot 10University of California Copenhagen, Denmark at San Diego 27 June 2008

About me

PhD student studying cognitive science

focus: how (if) social web services facilitate information discovery & sensemaking

BRAIN • BEHAVIOR • COMPUTATION

COGNITIVE SCIENCE

psychology linguistics

computerscience

anthropology

neuroscience

human-computer interaction

philosophy

the emphasis on finding and describing ‘knowledge structures’ that are somewhere ‘inside’ the individual encourages us to overlook the fact that human cognition is always situated in a complex sociocultural world and cannot be unaffected by it

DISTRIBUTED COGNITION

Ed HutchinsCognition in the Wild (1995) p.xiii

“

”

Source: Ed Hutchins

What DISTRIBUTED COGNITION is NOT:

• NOT the study of social networks• NOT the same as “collective intelligence”• NOT the “wisdom of crowds” effect• NOT a type of cognition

• other people• material artifacts• culture

What DISTRIBUTED COGNITION is:

Source: Ed Hutchins

Source: Rod Stockwell

• friends, buddy lists

• interfaces, social objects

• social roles, rules

• other people

• material artifacts

• culture

In the real world In the online world

What is the appropriate unit of analysis?

Source: Chris Messina

What is the appropriate unit of analysis?

What is the appropriate unit of analysis?

Applying the theory...

Individual user:

Information:

Your thoughts...

References:

- Ed Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild (1995)

- G. Salomon, Editor’s introduction to Distributed Cognitions (1997)

BOOKS

ARTICLES

- Ed Hutchins, How a cockpit remembers its speed (1995)

- Yvonne Rogers, A brief introduction to distributed cognition (1997)

- Hollan, Hutchins & Kirsh, Distributed Cognition: a new foundation for human-computer interaction research. (2002)

- C. Halverson, Activity theory and distributed cognition: Or what does CSCW need to DO with theories? (2002)