Distributed cognition; or, cognition within a complex system

…Complex system, because, after all, humans and human organization within a particular environment, such as a functional organization, are complex.

On p. 177 of “Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research,” the authors claim that the patterns of information trajectories must be stable in order for the underlying cognitive architecture to emerge. I would disagree with this view unless the following view is also consented for discussion. In his book Chaos: Making a New Science, Gleick argues that communication is chaotic, or orderly disordered, and can thus be studied with chaos-theoretic methods. Moreover, Parunak et al. (p. 2) argue that distributed multi-agent systems, such as foraging ants coupling with the environment, should be studied in terms of two systemic levels: micro level, wherein chaos occurs, and macro level, wherein order (social organization) emerges. And order emerges because of the chaotic dissipation of information by the shared environment to which the actors are casually or intentionally coupled. Thus, in my view, there must exist some sort of cognitive architecture even in chaotic communication systems. Either way, both views perpetuate the theoretical claims of distributed cognition, including embodied cognition.

A very important observation of this paper is the strong possibility of creating virtual social/collaborative environments whose properties could replicate and even transcend the properties of real environments (pp. 184-185). If the theoretical framework behind distributed cognition enables such an observation, then workspace awareness in Gutwin’s framework may be subsumed by Hutchins’ framework along with the issues it attempts to address and tackle. The loop Hutchins proposes (p. 181), wherein cognitive ethnography plays a central role, may be carefully employed to address the issue of workspace awareness. The next question we face is “How?“.

While the latter question is yet-to-be-addressed and explored as the authors humbly conclude, it is a legitimate relief to finally observe the harnessing of three disciplines–cognitive sciences, cognitive anthropology, and socio-psychological sciences–to provide the theoretical foundation for distributed cognition so as to incrementally build better interfaces.