ABSTRACT
In his now classic analysis of distributed cognition, based on his observations of naval navigation, Hutchins (1995) coined the term ‘cognition in the wild.’ 1 As Hutchins uses it, the phrase
refers to human cognition in its natural habitat—that is, to naturally occurring culturally constituted human activity.… I have in mind the distinction between the laboratory, where cognition is studied in captivity, and the everyday world where human cognition adapts to its natural surroundings. I hope to evoke with this metaphor a sense of an ecology of thinking in which human cognition interacts with an environment rich in organizing resources. (Hutchins, 1995: xiii–xiv)
