Distributed Cognition (DCog) – Hutchins 2000, Hollan, Hutchins, & Kirsh 2000
A unit of measurement to gauge observations they made of the conversations that took place among the crew of a flight simulator’s cockpit.

DCog sees cognitive processes as “delimited by the functional relationships among the elements that participate in” them, “rather than by the spatial collocation of the elements.”

DCog “looks for broader class of cognitive events and does not expect all such events to be encompassed by the skin or skull of an individual.”

The theoretical interpretation of observed events might depend on the meanings participants assigns to those events.

The researchers use ethnography to inform their analysis of the observed events. Their observations go through a number of transformations: from audio and video records; to a written transcript; to a description of the event’s actions.

IN any system, the cognitive work of the system may amount to more than any one individual. This is apparent in the examined cockpit crew.

Distributed access to information is important to DCog. Emergent properties of a system derive from interpretations of system members, which depend on distributed information access.

Inersubjective understanding is a participant-constructed, shared understanding of a situation.

Intersubjectivity is important for a number of reasons: it maintains efficient modes of communication.; it helps to organize behavior that constructs properties of the larger system; and helps to determine the trajectory of information within a system

Distribution of access to information can enable distribution of information storage within a system.

Distribution of information storage can help with redundant error checking and mutual monitoring of one another, which leads to greater intersubjectivity.

Information can take on many forms as it moves through a system. FOr example, a message may be heard a string of words; saved to a participant’s memory; spoken by that participant; saved to a second participant’s memory; and, finally, encoded into an instrument.

The memory of information need not only be encoded by human participants. In fact the memory of messages is more durable when assigned to artifacts.

Integrated Research Framework

Ethnography contributes to an understanding of DCog in an interitive sense. DCog also contributes to our understanding of how to setup an ethnographic study.

Discussion
How might an application built for CSCW look if it were designed to support DCog?

• Shared visual / sensory technology
• Important information is shared and redundant
• Notification of creation / upload
• Tagging / Sharing of the information

As an example of a possible DCog application, how to do Tag Clouds utilize intersubjectivity?

What are the advantages of Hollan, etc. Al’s Integrated Research Framework? What are the drawbacks? Is the Framework a viable model for a CSCW practitioner?