In order to focus as clearly as possible on some of the issues involved in the analysis of cognition in the workplace, this chapter will investigate a single, very simple, but very pervasive, activity performed by different kinds of workers in a medium-sized airport: looking at airplanes. Despite the brevity of individual glances, they are in no way haphazard. Workers look at planes in order to see something that will help them accomplish the work they are engaged in. Understanding that looking, therefore, requires analysis of the work activities within which it is embedded.

Powerful resources for the detailed analysis of mundane activities have been provided by the approach to the analysis of human interaction that encompasses Goffman (1963, 1971, 1974), Garfinkel (1967), Kendon (1990), and, most relevant to the work in the present paper, conversation analysis (Atkinson & Heritage, 1984; Drew & Heritage, 1992; C. Goodwin, 1981; M. H. Goodwin, in press; Goodwin & Heritage, 1990; Jefferson, 1973, 1984; Sacks, 1992; Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974; Schegloff, 1968). Moreover, in order to see the airplane in an appropriate, task-relevant way, workers use a range of different kinds of tools. A primary perspective for analysis of how human beings interact, not only with other human beings, but also with a material world shaped by the historical activities of others, can be found in activity theory (Cole, 1985, 1990; Engestrom, 1987, 1990; Leont'ev, 1981; Vygotsky, 1962, 1978; Wertsch, 1985) and the work on distributed cognition that grows from it (Hutchins, 1990, 1995; Middleton & Edwards, 1990; Siefert & Hutchins, 1989).