Roger Säljö – Hybrid minds and sources of knowing: the sociomaterial nature of human cognition

Humans are the only species, which is dependent on technologies in most of what we do. We remember by using texts and databases, we calculate and measure by using a range of increasingly sophisticated devices and our perceptual capacities are supported by spectacles, binoculars and microscopes. We live in a world that is designed. An interesting question in this perspective is how human cognitive (and other) capacities are to be understood and in what sense they should be understood as localized in the mind or brain of the individual or, alternatively, if they are to be understood as distributed across minds and artifacts. The position we take on these issues have implications far beyond research and concern, for instance, how we organize learning and instruction in various contexts.