Collaborative tagging as distributed cognition.

Reference: Steels, L. (2006). Collaborative tagging as distributed cognition. Pragmatics & Cognition, 14 (2), 287-292.

This article discusses recent developments in the web technologies based on the impact of collaborative tagging on the distributed cognition. How this communication technology (tagging) will effect on the distributed cognition.
In the beginning I believe we to understand what is collaborative tagging?
Collaborative tagging is a form of social software that has recently attracted a huge number of users. Web sites like Flicker, del.icio.us, and 2collab.com, encourage users to share photos, videos, blogs, article references, and music. These data objects are associated with tags, common words freely chosen by the user. They describe a data item in a subjective and often associative way. It is an effective method to organize and retrieve data. Tags are used to organize personal data, and are made public so that other users can access and browse them.
Beginning in 2004 and quickly becoming a standard on websites, collaborative tagging allows users to upload or select materials (pictures, music files, videos, texts and so on) and associate tags with these materials. Tags can be chosen freely, and are similar to keywords. Other users can then browse through tags; a click on a tag connects a user to similarly tagged materials. Tags furthermore enable tag clouds which graphically represent the popularity of tags, demonstrating co-occurrence relations between tags and thus jump from one tag to another. Collaborative tagging on the web is one of the most recent developments in technological support for distributed cognition.
According to this study, tagging is an alternative to the current URL hyperlinks used on the web. A hyperlink introduces a direct link to another site, and a user can simply click on a piece of text or on a picture and be transported to another site. Tagging also has some advantages because the relation between a tag and the address of the resources to which it may point is centrally managed and so new materials can become associated with tags in a distributed fashion. Another advantage of tags is that they introduce a kind of taxonomy of keywords or classifiers which aid users in browsing by providing meta-data about the contents of uploaded material.

The relationship between Distributed Cognition theory and collaborative tagging:
Distributed cognition as a theory of learning has been widely applied in the field of e-Learning, especially in relation to Compuer Collaborative Learning (CCL) and other computer-supported learning tools. Distributed cognition illustrates the process of interaction between people and technologies in order to determine how to best represent, store and provide access to digital resources and other artifacts.
Distributed cognition can also be seen through cultures and communities. Learning certain habits or following certain traditions is seen as cognition distributed over a group of people. Exploring distributed cognition through community and culture is one way to understand how it may work.
With the new research that is emerging in this field, the overarching concept of distributed cognition enhances the understanding of interactions between humans, machines and environments.
In his conclusion, Steels believe that this relationship between distributed cognition and collaborative tagging may help us to understand how humans introduce symbols to organize their information spaces, and especially how their personal choices are influenced by the choices of others.

By: Abdul