Communication
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
The fact
that the navigation team distributes computational procedures across a social
organization raises the possibility that there may be better and worse ways to
arrange the distribution. One way
in which the
distribution of computational procedures can be better or worse concerns the
relation between the kinds of structure that can be passed between
computational elements and the kinds
of structure
with which the passed structures must be coordinated in the performance of the
task .
Verbal
descriptions typically fail not because they don't provide enough structure but
because they provide the wrong kind of structure. The difference between the right and the
wrong kinds of structure is determined by both the nature of the task and the
other structural resources that are available .
First , the
amount of information that is conveyed by a given utterance is not a simple
function of the
volume of
structure in the utterance. Information
and coding theory define the minimum bandwidth required to encode a given set
of alternative messages. From the
perspective of information theory ,
natural
language is not an efficient code.
Second, the
expressiveness of the code may determine the cognitive properties of the larger
system. Whether a team of planners can
mount a successful amphibious landing may depend on the range of distinctions that
can be made in the language spoken by the mission planners.
The
properties of language change with the register of the speech and with the
medium in which the utterances are carried. The mandated language on the
intercom is almost telegraphic.
Viewing
language as one of the structured representations produced and coordinated in
the performance of the task highlights the information -bearing properties of
language. In cognitive science, language
is usually thought of primarily as a human computational capacity that should
be understood in terms of the processing that individuals must do to produce or
interpret it .
Shifting
attention from the cognitive properties of an individual to those of a system
of socially distributed cognition casts language in a new light. The properties of the language itself
interact with the properties of the communications technology in ways that
affect the computational properties of the larger cognitive system.
Does the
structure of language determine the structure of thought? " seems to be
" Sometimes and sometimes not ."
When the
structure of language is not useful as a mediating resource in task performance
, then task performance does not seem to be affected by the structure of
language. When cognitive activities are
distributed across social space, the language or languages used by task
performers to communicate are almost certain to serve as structuring resources,
and the structure of language will
affect the
cognitive properties of the group even if they do not affect the cognitive
properties of individuals in the group.
