Stepping Inside the Cognitive System
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
The basic
computations of navigation could be characterized at the computational ,
representational / algorithmic , and implementational levels entirely in terms
of observable representations .
On this view
of cognitive systems, communication among the actors is seen as a process
internal to the cognitive system.
Computational media , such as diagrams and
charts , are seen as representations internal to the system, and the
computations carried out upon them are more processes internal to the system.
Because the
cognitive activity is distributed across a social network , many of these
internal processes and internal communications are directly observable.
With systems
of socially distributed cognition we can step inside the cognitive system, and
while some underlying processes (inside people's heads) remain obscured , a
great deal of the internal organization and operation of the system is directly
observable.
