Reaction: Distributed Cognition as a Theoretical Framework for Information Visualization

The paper tries to explain the importance of distributed cognition framework in information visualization field. The author's deduction that visual tools don't amplify cognition, but cognition is actually a system dependent on environment and neither action nor perception can be separated from the system is really impressive which is like a completely different perception of the traditional view of human cognition. A theoretical framework is important for serving a base standard for information visualization and the use of DCog may be useful in some places and not in some other places.

"Cognition as an emergent property of interaction" helps in illustrating a proper framework for DCog where we need to consider the internal, external and distributed representations to perceive the cognitive system. I disagree with the user potrayal of Dcog as a dominant framework compared to traditional cognitive framework because this is a newly evolving framework and the older theory is already in practice and there may be many problems with the new framework and this also contradicts with the author's statement where he says the theory's correctness depends on the uses of the theory and Dcog is very less used and so simple application in various fields would prove the importance of a Distributed Cognitive Framework.