July 2010 Archives

What is Distributed Cognition?

Our 6th webinar from our monthly series on the new media literacies held last week, What is Distributed Cognition? was a big success!  I'd like to share with you the presentation we gave for those of you who couldn't attend.  This presentation was created and made possible through the collaboration of Henry Jenkins, Katie Clinton, Vanessa Vartabedian and myself.  Over the past few weeks, we came together (via Skype and email conversations) to reflect on what was written in the white paper and to further explore what distributed cognition means and how to foster this new media literacy with educators and students.


We define distributed cognition as the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities.  One of our past webinars focused on the new media literacy, collective intelligence -- the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal.  Collective intelligence focuses on the ability of humans working together and is a complementary skill to the new media literacy, distributed cognition which can push our notion of pooling knowledge and expanding our capacity to include not just humans but the tools we use in sharing and expanding our knowledge.

In having us talk more deeply about distributed cognition, I want to share that I think this literacy is different than the others in NML's list.  For one, we saw that it wasn't a skill educators and students gravitated towards as an entry point in beginning to understand the new media literacies.  Perhaps, its because distributed cognition is more of a philosophy of mind, meaning its ever present in something we practice, an unconscious practice that we're hoping more people become aware of.  It's different than our other nmls, for example transmedia navigation that is more tangible and applicable.  Including distributed cognition, as one of the new media literacies is our tipping of our hat to the education research that we think the new media literacies aligns with and a chance for you to better understand what cognition is in the 21st century.

To better understand distributed cognition, the first thing to grapple with is --What is a Tool?  In the 21st century, our minds might immediately go to the digital technology that has become an extension of ourselves and provides us with the ability to sample music, capture video, and edit media to socially construct meaning of the world.  It is these tools that are talked about and are becoming the tools that we are comfortable with in shaping our idea of the world.  

However, if you look back in history, you can see that the tools of today were not available back then, and so in thinking of the definition of distributed cognition, we need to broadly define the word tool as a device used to communicate, perform, make or facilitate.  These devices work in conjunction with our mental capacities, a combination of "hybrid systems" interacting with one another.  These tools can take many forms of externalized memory.  For example, a database holds a lot of information in one place and alleviates humans from having to remember or store all of it in their own brain.  We all can't be Rain Man but we can work with databases to remember large quantities of information, and free our minds to be used for other things - such as asking the right questions when we are analyzing that data.

Or we can use the tool to do work with us in gathering new information - like Facebook or Wikipedia, or the periodic table.  We use these tools to expand the pool of knowledge we access. The ability to use these tools becomes increasingly important as the amount of information available to tap into becomes bigger and bigger! An example of this is the spell checker.  We work with the spell checker to check our spelling.  If we were to take everything the tool said at face value, than we wouldn't be using it at its capacity and our spelling wouldn't be right all the time, especially if you take into account the different ways to spell words like their or two.  The spell checker shouldn't be seen as just a crutch; it can support our learning, especially if it's used within writing that the child is engaged in.  It offers an intrinsic goal of aligning learning how to spell with something the child is interested in.  

Henry Jenkins admits that he is a terrible speller and has learned how to spell words after the spell checker has caught his mistakes on many occasions.  It's the reminder of being shared this new information by the spell checker that has him fix his spelling errors going forward and he's learning the words in conjunction with the subjects he is passionate about.

Language is a central tool in intellectual activity.  We can think of language as a tool.  Take for example a book you read.  I'm currently reading Harry Potter to my son who is decoding and making sense of the story through performing as Harry Potter in the backyard as he makes up his own wand tricks or draws pictures of quidditch matches.  This sense of play helps him to better understand the stories we read together.  Or you can look at the millions of young fans who've joined communities, like FictionAlley to chat in detail about every character, and who have written fan fiction to extend the stories of many scenarios in Harry Potter.  All of this doesn't happen in isolation. It is a cultural and social practice that uses the delivery technologies available today to be understood and remixed by others.