5. Distributed, External and Extended Cognition

This chapter is concerned with how we think with things. This is not merely a matter of mediation but how all manner of tools, technologies and representations form a larger cognitive system. Distributed cognition recognised that to pilot a ship into port required, in practice, the combined efforts of a number of sailors, their charts and navigational equipment. In parallel with this came the recognition that we tend to off-load computationally demanding tasks to the environment. We create maps and graphics, make lists, and more recently, rely on our cell phones rather than burdening our limited memories and attention. And we have been doing this for a very long time. Finally, and most radically, it has been proposed that cognition is whatever combination of brain, body and environment (including technology) which gets the job done. This places on a par these three different components of cognition and opens the door to a fundamental rethink of how we use technology.