Saturday, July 1, 2006

Dias et al., "Distributed Cognition at Work"

Dias, Patrick, Aviva Freedman, Peter Medway, and Anthony Pare. "Distributed Cognition at Work." Cushman, Kintgen, Kroll, and Rose 199-208.

Dias et al. (reprinted here from Worlds Apart) briefly introduce the concept of distributed cognition, which recognizes "that 'people appear to think in conjunction or partnership with others and with the help of culturally provided tools and implements'" (199). The authors lead with a comparison of Hutchins' research on the complexly coordinated efforts involved in navigating a ship; Dias et al. compare ship navigation to the work of managing economic policy done by the Bank of Canada (BOC). A brief few pages of theorization (drawing on Lave, Hutchings and Engestrom) sets up a protracted analysis of the activities at the BOC. Unlike the ship, however, which is eased by routines, the cognitive load for workers at the BOC requires "extended pieces of reasoning" (201d). Their research focuses on genre, which seem to align with Miller's "social action" model: "It is through complex webs of discursive interactions and, in particular, genres that the cognition of the BOC is accomplished distributively" (202).

"Hutchings points out that the maps used in navigation look more like coordinate charts in geometry rather than like amps in an atlas; this is true as well of the mathematical models and graphs guiding the progress of the BOC" (200). This gets at the role of images, of maps, and the distinction between geometries and geographies (like Moretti).

^See "thought styles": "the recurrence of certain lexical phrases (which represent categories of experience) and argumentative warrants" (203c). The idea of recurrent and shared categories of experience rings of folksonomy somewhat. Folksonomy, in this arrangement, becomes a feature of the organization and its genre-based activities, which include introducing "alternative scenarios" (203c) and "decision making" (204b).

"It is a commonplace at the BOC that what is expected in writing (and in oral presentations based on written analysis) is more than elevator economics: that is, this went up and this went down. There must always be interpretation, analysis, comparison with forecasts, and possibly suggestions for revision to these forecasts" (206d).
"All in all, then, the BOC thinks and distributes its cognition through sets of genres, each with its expected form" (207c).
"Of particular interest to our work is the role of verbal discourse in the distribution of cognition--especially in the form of sets of interweaving genres that are not just the media and shaping agents for the interpretation but also the sites for both social sharing and communal creation as well as the sites for identifying and negotiating internal contradictions" (208d).

Related sources

Cole and Engestrom. 1993. "A Socio-cultural approach to distributed cognition. In G. Solomon (Ed.), Distributed Cognitions (1-46). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Hutchings, Edward. 1993. "Learning to Navigate." In S. Chaiklin and J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context (pp. 35-63). Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, S. 1986. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. 2nd Ed. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Posted by Derek Mueller at July 1, 2006 5:53 PM to Writing Technologies