We haven’t completely unpacked yet, but we are mostly done. The bulk of my possessions consists of books, and I have most of my books unpacked and placed into book cases.
By Wednesday, I had gotten most of my professional books into the bookcases in my office at church. On Thursday, I noticed that I started thinking differently: I was thinking about a work-related problem, and I knew part of the answer was to be found in a book that I owned, and I walked over to the shelf and pulled that book out. A week ago, I would not have been able to find that book; and a week ago, I simply ignored that problem.
The theory of distributed cognition suggests that tools contain a measure of accumulated wisdom. A crosscut panel saw, for example, contains accumulated wisdom on one way of cutting wood (whereas a coping saw contains a somewhat different accumulation of wisdom on cutting wood). I used to work for a cabinetmaker, and saws and other tools shape both your body and your mind: using a Western-style crosscut panel saw strengthens certain muscles, and makes your mind think about wood in certain ways; if you then try to use a Japanese-style pull saw, you find that you use different muscles, and you also find that you have to think about wood in a different way.
But it’s not just individual tools which contain distributed cognition. When I worked for the cabinetmaker, over time I came to realize that the layout of his shop also contained accumulated wisdom: the way he organized his workbenches and big machines shaped the way we thought about making things, and shaped our work physically as well. Not only that, but the toolboxes that he carried to job sites were also a form of distributed cognition. Thus, tools which are in themselves a kind of distributed cognition can be assembled in arrangements which are yet another layer of distributed cognition.
A library, whether a personal library or an institution’s library, is a form of distributed cognition that is similar to the cabinetmaker’s shop. An individual book is one form of distributed cognition (obviously); but a library, the way it is arranged, the books that are in it and the books that are not in it, is another form of distributed cognition. I learned how to lay out my personal library both from spending a great deal of time in institutional libraries, as well as from looking at the personal libraries of friends and mentors in my field; another influence on my personal library has been syllabuses from graduate school courses. The Library of Congress cataloguing system and the Dewey Decimal system offer ways to systematically arrange human knowledge (as it is contained in books); and each profession has its own ways of organizing the knowledge essential to that profession. Professionally speaking, I think more clearly when I can get at my professional library.
One of my frustrations with Google Books is that the books within it are poorly organized; Google wants you to browse its online books using its search engine, but search engines contain very little in the way of distributed cognition. Books and libraries are highly evolved and subtle technologies; by comparison, today’s e-books and e-libraries are in many ways crude and clumsy technologies.
Wow. I had never heard of “distributed cognition” (as a term) before. Of course it makes absolute sense. Very cool concept.
When I worked and had an office I also had two libraries, one at home and one at work. There were times when I would be thinking about a work related problem while at home and the book I wanted to refer to was in my office. Now that I am retired and my office is in my home it is nice to have all of my books in one place. I think modern technology should allow me to store all of my personal reference library in something I can easily carry. In other words, I want to create my own personal version of something similar to kindle that would store not only officially available books but also papers, notes, etc in such a way that I could access them on something like the kindle epaper device. This would be an adjunct to my mind.
Dan, I like your concept of “distibuted cognition”.
Jean and Dad — For more on distributed cognition, one book is Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, edited by Gavriel Salomon (Cambridge University, 1993).
Dad, regarding the Kindle, I have been reading very mixed reviews. The review in the August 3 New Yorker lists most of the downsides that I have heard. The biggest downsides of the Kindle from my perspective are the following: poor support for endnotes; low graphics resolution so that tables and graphs don’t read clearly; inability of Kindle to specify pages (which makes it difficult to use the index).
PDF seems to me to be a much more robust format for books — endnotes work very well indeed, the graphics resolution is higher, pages are specified just as in a book. Additionally, since all books these days start with a digital file, and since you can make a PDF directly from that file, a PDF version of the book will look exactly like the printed version. From the reviews I’ve been reading, the Sony Reader is better for reading PDFs than the Kindle.
One more point in PDF’s favor — Preparing a PDF book from the digital print files is cheap and costs about $500 or less (according to a recent issue of the Independent Book Publishers Association), meaning that even small independent presses can publish their books as a PDF. Preparing a PDF is free if you don’t need things like endnote numbers that take you to the endnote when you click on them. Amazon is only publishing Kindle versions of relatively high-volume books, which means that many of the books in my professional library would be unavailable.