distributed cognition and the social web

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)