Video Transcript This video shows Dr. William Winn speaking:

There is a theory which holds that when we solve problems, and when we learn we typically don't do so, or we do better if we share the there is the phrase cognitive load- we share the load of solving the problem with other people and other things, other devices. The again, the sort of paradigmatic case for that is a vignette by Hutchins in his book. the name of his book Cognition in the Wild where he describes how the crew of a navy ship brings the ship into San Diego harbor. And he describes the people out on the wings of the bridge taking bearings. He describes the people operating the sonar. He describes the people doing the radar. He describes the people plotting the course. He describes the people giving the orders to the guy at the helm and the guy at the helm. There are two points. The first is that no single person at any one time has all the information to make the decision about what to do. The first one, in this sense, is distributive. The second thing is that the distribution occurs amongst many people, but amongst devices, so you don't distinguish between a range finder, or a radar scope, which is a machine, and the person that's operating it. They're all part of the same system. So, basically then, that's what we mean by distributed cognition and again it is very closely to this notion that learning and problem solving and thinking and all the things we do are Social.