Distributed Cognition System Analysis (Multiplayer Video Game or Basketball Team)

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I ATTACHED BELOW ALL THE INSTRUCTION AND NECESSARY READINGS.

- PLEASE READ & FOLLOW ALL THE DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY AND FULLY

- The reading is REQUIRED for the paper

-Must be in APA format

-DCOG stands for Distributed Cognition.

-The group/team that I want analyzing for the paper is either Multiplayer Video Game teammates or a Basketball Team (whichever is easier for you)

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COGS 102A, FALL ‘18 — Assignment 2 DCOG system analysis DUE BEFORE 11PM ON TUESDAY 11/13 Submit via TritonEd. No late submissions, no exceptions. WHAT YOU’LL TURN IN A ~4 page paper synthesizing research insights based on course readings and lectures. Assignment Goals: The goal of this assignment is to practice applying the concepts you have learned thus far towards a more comprehensive discussion and analysis of a DCOG system that you identify. You will focus on how the elements of the system are brought into coordination, the interactions involved, and how the system is ultimately able to achieve a cognitive goal that cannot be accounted for at the level of any individual component. ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES 1. While you are encouraged to do your own observations of the activity system you choose, this is n ​ ot required​. If you are unsure the activity system you have chosen to analyze is appropriate, post your idea to Piazza and we will give feedback/guidance 2. You are not allowed to utilize any specific examples from lecture or the readings as the basis for your assignment—​you must identify and analyze your own example 3. You are not allowed to use an airline cockpit or ship’s navigation crew/system as an existing example of a DCOG human activity system (thoroughly covered by Hutchins) 4. Don’t be afraid to be creative and to engage critically with the ideas you have been exposed to in the class, but make sure that you are careful and deliberate in how you approach the prompts below, and especially in how you tie them together WHAT YOU’LL DO (writing prompt): 1. Describe an existing ​human activity system​ that is an example of distributed cognition occuring “in the wild” 2. Explain the relevance and consequences of the ​unit of analysis​ in this context 3. Detail the ​emergent properties​ that arise from the interactions in the system 4. Apply the ​framework of DCOG​ to a thoughtful analysis of the system 5. Explicate the c ​ ognitive accomplishment(s)​ of the system 6. Elaborate the importance of the s ​ ocial and cultural elements​ of this DCOG system 7. Reflect on and ​draw connections to earlier course themes/concepts ASSIGNMENT REQUIREMENTS 1. Demonstrate a clear understanding of DCOG concepts: unit of analysis, emergence, cognitive accomplishment, division of cognitive labor, coordination of parts, propagation of representations, temporal distribution, social and cultural distribution 2. Thoughtfully and thoroughly discuss the relationships between these concepts, and directly relate them to your analysis in an insightful and meaningful way 3. Practice critical thinking to identify and discuss how your analysis thoughtfully addresses the prompts above, using evidence to support your claims and arguments 4. Write a coherent and concise paper that satisfies all assigned requirements ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE CAN BE FOUND ON PAGE 2 COGS 102A, FALL ‘18 — Assignment 2 2 CITATION REQUIREMENTS AND FORMATTING ● You must cite a minimum of three (3) relevant readings from class ● Must use APA formatting (see owl.english.purdue.edu for a style guide) for both in-text citations as well as list of references—be consistent. No abstract/title page is required—APA formatting is for citations ​only ● No shallow citations. If you cite a source, explain its relevance and importance to the topic under discussion in enough detail to demonstrate a clear/salient connection DOCUMENT SPECIFICATIONS ● Length​: 3(min) to 5(max) pages, double spaced, 12 pt typeface, standard margins ● Title​: Please give your paper a title at the top of the document ● Sections/headings​: you are encouraged to use appropriate sections and heading to structure your document and provide context for the reader. These should not take the place of actual body content as it relates to the expected length of your paper This excerpt from Cognition in the Wild. Edwin Hutchins. © 1995 The MIT Press. is provided in screen-viewable form for personal use only by members of MIT CogNet. Unauthorized use or dissemination of this information is expressly forbidden. If you have any questions about this material, please contact cognetadmin@cognet.mit.edu. 1 W~ W118 Aboatd N8T8tive: A ~ After several days at sea, the U .SiS. Palau was returning to port , making approximately 10 knots in the narrow channel between Ballast Point and North Island at the entrance to San Diego Harbor . In the pilothouse or navigation bridge , two decks above the flight deck , a junior officer had the conn (ie ., was directing the steering of the ship ), under the supervision of the navigator . The captain sat quietly in his chair on the port side of the pilothouse watching the work of the bridge team. Morale in the pilothouse had sagged during two frustrating hours of engineering drills conducted just outside the mouth of the harbor but was on the rise now that the ship ' was headed toward the pier . Some of the crew talked about where they should go for dinner ashore and joked about going all the way to the pier at 15 knots so they could get off the ship before nightfall . The bearing recorder had just given the command " Stand by to mark time 3 8 " and the fathometer operator was reporting the depth of the water under the ship when the intercom erupted with the voice of the engineer of the watch : " Bridge , Main Control . I am ' losing steam drum pressure . No apparent cause. I m shutting my " throttles . Moving quickly to the intercom , the conning officer acknowledged : " Shutting throttles , aye." The navigator moved to the ' s chair " , repeating : Captain , the engineer is losing steam on captain the boiler for no apparent cause." Possibly because he realized that the loss of steam might affect the steering of the ship , the conning officer ordered the rudder amidships . As the helmsman spun the wheel to bring the rudder angle indicator to the centerline , he answered the conning officer : " Rudder amidships , aye sir ." The captain " " began to speak , saying Notify , but the engineer was back on the intercom , alarm. in his voice this time , speaking rapidly , almost " ' shouting : Bridge , Main Control , I m going to secure number two boiler at this time . Recommend you drop the anchor ! " The captain had been stopped in mid -sentence by the blaring intercom , but before the engineer could finish speaking the captain said , in a loud but cool voice , " Notify the bosun ." It is standard procedure on Chapter1 2 large ships to have an anchor prepared to drop in case the ship loses its ability to maneuver while in restricted waters . With the propulsion plant out , the bosun , who was standing by with a crew forward ready to drop the anchor , was notified that he might be called into action . The falling intonation of the captain ' s command gave it a cast of resignation or perhaps boredom and made it sound entirely routine . In fact , the situation was anything but routine . The occasional cracking voice , a muttered curse , or a perspiration -soaked shirt on this cool spring afternoon told the real story : the Palau was not fully under control , and careers and possibly lives were in jeopardy . The immediate consequences of this event were potentially ' grave . Despite the crew s correct responses, the loss of main steam put the ship in danger . Without steam, it could not reverse its propeller - the only way to slow a large ship efficiently . The friction of the water on the ship ' s hull will eventually reduce its speed, but the Palau would coast for several miles before coming to a stop . The engineering officer ' s recommendation that the anchor be dropped was not appropriate . Since the ship was still traveling at a high rate of speed, the only viable option was to attempt to keep the ship in the deep water of the channel and coast until it had lost enough speed to safely drop anchor . Within 40 seconds of the report of loss of steam pressure , the steam drum was exhausted . All steam-turbine -operated machinery came to a halt , including the turbine generators that produce the ' ship s electrical power . All electrical power was lost throughout the ship , and all electrical devices without emergency power backup ceased to operate . In the pilothouse a high -pitched alarm sounded for a few seconds , signaling an under -voltage condition for one piece of equipment . Then the pilothouse fell eerily silent as the electric motors in the radars and other devices spun down and stopped . Just outside the navigation bridge , the port wing pelorus operator watched the gyrocompass card in his pelorus swing wildly and then return to its original heading . He called in to the bearing recorder standing at the chart table : " John, this gyro just went nuts ." The bearing recorder acknowledged the comment and told the pelorus operator that a breakdown was in progress : " Yeah , I know , I know , we 're havin ' a casualty ." Because the main steering gear is operated with electric motors , the ship now not only had no way to arrest its still -considerable W Alcnm A Aboard 3 forward motion ; it also had no way to quickly change the angle of its rudder . The helm does have a manual backup system , located in a compartment called aftersteering in the stem of the ship : a worm gear mechanism powered by two men on bicycle cranks . However , even strong men working hard with this mechanism can change the angle of the massive rudder only very slowly . Shortly after the loss of power , the captain said to the navigator , who was the most experienced conning officer on board , " OK , Gator , I ' d like you to take the conn ." The navigator answered " Aye , sir " and , turning away from the captain , announced : " Attention in the pilothouse . This is the navigator . I have the conn ." As required , the quartermaster of the watch acknowledged (" Quartermaster , " " " aye ) and the helmsman reported Sir , my rudder is amidships . The navigator had been looking out over the bow of the ship , trying to detect any turning motion . He answered the helmsman : " Very well . Right 5 degrees rudder ." Before the helmsman could reply , the navigator increased the ordered angle : " Increase your rudder " right 10 degrees. (The rudder angle indicator on the helm station has two parts ; one shows the rudder angle that is ordered and the other the actual angle of the rudder .) The helmsman spun the wheel , causing the indicator of the desired rudder angle to move to the right 10 degrees, but the indicator of the actual rudder angle " seemed not to move at all . " Sir , I have no helm sir ! he reported . Meanwhile , the men on the cranks in aftersteering were straining to move the rudder to the desired angle . Without direct helm control ' , the conning officer acknowledged the helmsman s report and sought to make contact with aftersteering by way of one of the " " phone talkers on the bridge : Very well . Aftersteering , Bridge . The " navigator then turned to the helmsman and said Let me know if " you get it back . Before he could finish his sentence , the helmsman " I have it back sir ." When the , navigator acknowledged responded , the report , the ship was on the right side of the channel but heading far to the left of the desired course. " Very well , increase your rudder to right 15." " Aye sir . My rudder is right 15 degrees. No new course given ." The navigator acknowledged - " Very well " - and then , looking out over the bow , whispered " Come on , damn it , " swing ! Just then , the starboard wing pelorus operator spoke on the ' " phone circuit : John , it looks like we re gonna hit this buoy over here." The bearing recorder had been concentrating on the chart and hadn 't quite heard . " Say again " he requested . The starboard wing pelorus operator leaned over the railing of his platform to Chapter1 4 watch the buoy pass beneath him . It moved quickly down the side of the ship , staying just a few feet from the hull . When it appeared that the Palau would not hit the buoy , the starboard wing pelorus " '" operator said Nothin ; that ended the conversation . The men inside never knew how close they had come. Several subsequent helm commands were answered with " Sir , I have no helm ." When asked by the captain how he was doing , the navigator , referring to their common background as helicopter pilots , quipped " First time I ever dead-sticked a ship , captain ." (To " dead-stick " an aircraft is to fly it after the engine has died .) Steering a ship requires fine ' judgements of the ship s angular velocity . Even if helm response was instantaneous , there would still be a considerable lag between the time a helm command was given and the time when the ship ' s response to the changed rudder angle was first detectable as the movement of the bow with respect to objects in the distance . Operating with this manual system , the navigator did not always know what the actual rudder angle was , and could not know how long to expect to wait to see if the ordered command was having the desired effect. Because of the slowed response time of the rudder , the navigator ordered more extreme rudder angles than usual , causing the Palau to weave erratically from one side of the channel to the other . Within 3 minutes , the diesel -powered emergency generators were brought on line and electrical power was restored to vital systems throughout the ship . Control of the rudder was partially restored , but remained intermittent for an additional 4 minutes . Although the ship still could not control its speed, it could at least now keep itself in the dredged portion of the narrow channel . On the basis of the slowing over the first 15 minutes after the casualty , it became possible to estimate when and where the Palau would be moving slowly enough to drop anchor . The navigator conned the ship toward the chosen spot . About 500 yards short of the intended anchorage , a sailboat took a course that would lead it to cross close in front of the Palau . Normally the Palau would have sounded five blasts with its enormous horn to indicate disagreement with the actions taken by the other vessel. However , the Palau ' s horn is a steam whistle , and without steam pressure it will not sound . The Navigation Department has among its equipment a small manual foghorn , basically a bicycle pump with a reed and a bell . The navigator remembered Welcome Aboard 5 this take , blasts . and gear find , post deck a of piece his the the The horn of keeper - talkie walkie the instructed manual to horn the out to the deck bow the deck two and , ran log maintain of keeper descend , sound from to the the to log levels five , with the flight warning pilothouse communication leave the carrying . bridge The ' captain the grabbed for microphone the deck flight s address public " " and system Can asked hear you me on the deck flight ? Men below " on the deck turned and waved the at up . pilothouse Sailboat ' Palau crossing s bow be advised that I am not . . . I have no . power " You of cross the at your sailboat sails its men had were on the and begun clear . the the by horn would who was be , . time he would holding yards the bow the island to it , goal was from signal turned , between lay his to the had log of that the watch deck base halfway navigator to the the the only , a the officer junior " - walkie was reach . The meaningless a he hull and ship bow of 100 , the foreground the from time the the keeper nearly Before In to emerged the of . the this By bow running , stairs bow power the now across . pilothouse Meanwhile of flights and that the were deck sprinting island no under from flight two have disappeared collision down . I risk visible impending run the own talkie and exclaimed tell Just him to " the put sucker the and , passed down the flight . the by Palau and . A the to were Twenty the the required later take a up the , . its keeper there position still , case the of from the , sailing deck the in signal visible emerged of of was ahead was sailboat The middle the directly mast was message the whether was of tip bow after minutes at of arrival the continued log other warnings no the nor captain of brought to perform to safely this the nor - task Some due , in was outside just kept of them - alone control of were to part the of thinking happening navigator neither chief kinds Many large especially acting quartermaster have . . bridge the could anchor was crew bridge on water ample more Palau . anchor the navigator team navigation it at Palau individual single in the , begun location navigation the had channel seamanship But ride and casualty engineering wild intended the of exceptional the the where anchor the and to bounds safe . seconds from to the The five miles brought by The from know then the ! sounded to way only times . - 2 no starboard bow five were which , few required than is that the it blasts There close under hit feeble sailboat so pilothouse from five deck heard and supervising the ship were in Chapter1 8 parallel , some in coordination with others , some inside the heads of individuals , and some quite clearly both inside and outside the heads of the participants . This book is about the above event and about the kind of system in which it took place . It is about human cognition - especially human cognition in settings like this one , where the problems that individuals confront and the means of solving them are culturally structured and where no individual acting alone is entirely responsible for the .outcomes that are meaningful to the society at large . Gaining access to this field site required me , as an ethnographer , to make three journeys at once. In this first chapter I will try to weave them together , for the reader will also have to make these journeys mentally in order to understand the world of military ship navigation . The first is a journey through physical space from my home and my usual workplace to the navigation bridge of the Palau . This journey took me through many gates, as I moved from the street to the military base, to the ship , and within the ship to the navigation bridge . I will try to convey the spatial organization of the setting in which navigation is performed . The second journey is a trip through social space in which I moved from the civilian social world past the ship ' s official gatekeepers into the social organization of the Navy , and then to the ship ' s Navigation Department . This journey closely parallels the journey through physical space because space is so often used as an element of social organization . As the spatial journey took me to regions with narrower and narrower boundaries , so the social journey leads us through successively narrower levels of social organization . The third journey is a movement through conceptual space, from the world of everyday spatial cognition into the technical world of navigation . This third journey does not really begin until I near the end of the other two . Ile MailGate TI I' ouah A crisp salute from a young marine in dress uniform at the main ' " " gate s guard shack marked the transition from the street to the " base" - from the civilian realm to the military . The base is a place of close -cropped haircuts and close-cropped lawns . Here nature and the human form are control led , arranged , disciplined , ready to make a good impression . In boot camp inductee ' s credo is : " If it Welcome Aboard 7 moves , salute it . If it doesn 't move , pick it up . If you can 't pick it " up , paint it white . The same mindset imposes an orderliness and a predictability on both the physical space and the social world of the military base. As a civilian employee of the Navy , I was encouraged to occasionally ride a ship in order to better understand the nature of the " " operational world . But being encouraged by my own organization to ride a ship and being welcomed by the crew are two different things . From the perspectives of the people running a ship , there may be little to gain from permit ting a civilian on board . Civilians , who are often ignorant of shipboard conventions , may require some tending to keep them out of trouble . They take up living space, which on many ships is at a premium , and if they do not have appropriate security clearances they may have to be escorted at all times . The. The Palau is an amphibious helicopter nansport . Its warfare mission is to nansport marines across the seas and then deliver them to the battlefields in the 25 helicopters that are carried on board . The helicopters also bring noops back to the ship , which has a small hospital and a complete operating theater . Ships of this class are often mistaken for true aircraft carriers of the sort that carry jet planes . As is the case with true aircraft carriers , the hull is capped by a large flat flight deck which creates an overhang on all sides of the ship . But this flight deck is only 592 feet long , just over half the length of a carrier deck and much too small to handle fixed -wing jets.. About halfway between the bow and the stem , jutting up out of the smooth expanse of the flight deck on the starboard rail , stands a four -story structure called the island . The island occupies the rightmost 20 feet of the flight deck , which is about 100 feet wide . The ship extends 28 feet below the surface of the water and weighs 17,000 tons empty . It is pushed through the water by a single propeller driven by a 22 ,000-horsepower steam turbine engine . ' Originally , the ships of the Palau s class were planned to have been almost 200 feet longer and to have two propulsion plants and two propellers . However , budget cuts in the early 1960s led to a hasty redesign . In the original design , the off -center weight of the steel island was to be balanced by the second propulsion plant . Chapter1 8 Unfortunately , the redesign failed to take into account the decrease in righting moment caused by the deletion of the second engine . When the hull that is now the Palau was launched , it capsized ! It was refloated , and the steel island was replaced with an aluminum one. The ship was renamed and put into service . The aluminum island is attached to the steel deck with steel bolts . In a wet and salty environment , this forms an electrolyte that causes corrosion of the attachment points between the island and the deck . There is a standing joke among those who work in the island that someday , in a big beam swell , the ship will roll to starboard and the island will simply topple off the deck into the sea. Two levels above the flight deck in the island is the navigation bridge . Also in the island are the air operations office , from which the helicopters are control led , and a flag bridge where an admiral and his staff can work . The top of the island bristles with radar antennae. - lie OilerNavIes TheGator Navy When I first went aboard the Palau it was tied up at pier 4 with several other amphibious ships . A frigate and a destroyer were tied up to an adjacent pier , but they are part of another navy within the Navy . Membership in these navies is an important component of naval identity . Troop transport is not considered a glamorous job in the Navy . The Palau is part of what is called the amphibious fleet , the portion of the fleet that delivers marines to battlegrounds on land . The amphibious fleet is also known somewhat derogatorily as the " " gator navy . The nickname is apparently derived from a reference to that amphibious reptile , the alligator . While the alligator is not a prototypical amphibian , its aggressiveness may be important in Navy culture ; " salamander navy " or " frog navy " might be too disparaging . The aviation community (the " airdales " ) claims to be the highest -status branch of the Navy . Most others would say that the submarine fleet (the " nukes " ) comes next , although the submariners consider themselves a breed apart . (They have a saying that there are only two kinds of ships in the navy : submarines and targets.) Then comes the surface fleet (the " black shoes" ). Within each of these groups are subgroupings , which are also ranked . In the sur - WelcomeAboard 8 face fleet the ranking descends from surface combatants (cruisers , destroyers , and frigates ) to aircraft carriers , then the amphibious fleet , and finally tenders and supply ships . While from the civilian point of view a sailor may be a sailor , in the Navy these distinctions mark important subcultural identities . The perceived differences are based on many factors , including the " " glamor of the expected mission , the sophistication of the equipment , the destructive potential , the stringency of requirements for entry into each area, the quality and extent of the training provided to the members of each community , and the general sense of the quality of the people involved . For a surface warfare officer who hopes to make a career out of the Navy and rise to a high rank , it is not good to be assigned to an amphibious ship for too long . Ships that carry aircraft and air crewmen present a special situation with respect to these groups . Because they have aircraft they have members of the aviation community aboard , but because they are ships they must have members of the surface community aboard. The commanding officer of an aircraft carrier is always a member of the air community - a measure of the notion in the navy that the air wing is the raison d 'efre of a ship that carries aircraft . The friction between the air community and the surface community may be manifested in subtle and not -so-subtle ways . If members of the air community account for the majority of the high ranking positions on a ship , junior surface warfare officers may " " complain that junior airdales are given more opportunities for qualification and advancement . An amphibious transport with an air wing is an even more complicated situation . Here members of the surface and air groups interact . And when marines are aboard an amphibious ship , there is also sometimes friction between the sailors and the marines . These patterns of differentiation are present at all levels of organization in the military , from the broadest of interservice rivalries to distinctions between the occupants of adjacent spaces on the ship . Such effects are present to some degree in many social organizations , but they are highly elaborated in the military . Much of the establishment of identity is expressed in propositions like this : " We are the ' fighting X s. We are proud of what we are and what we do. We are unlike any other group ." The unspoken inference is " If " you do something else, you cannot be quite as good as we are. Identities are also signaled by insignia and emblems of various Chapter1 10 kinds . In the officer ranks , breast insignia denote which navy one is in . Aviators wear wings , submariners wear dolphins , surface warfare officers wear cutlass es. Within each part of the surface fleet , there are strong identities associated with specific ships . Ships have stirring nationalistic or patriotic mottoes , which are often inscribed on plaques , baseball caps, t -shirts , and coffee mugs . Many ships produce yearbooks . The bond among shipmates is strongest when they are off ship . There is less of an identification with the class of one ' s ship , but some classes of ship are considered more advanced (less obsolete ) and more glamorous than others . The military institutionalizes competition at all levels of organization . Individuals compete with one another , and teams of individuals are pitted against other teams. Ships compete in exercises , and branch es of the military compete for funding and the opportunity to participate in combat . Aboard a ship this competitivenes manifests itself in a general opinion that " we in our space know what we are doing , but the people just on the other side of the bulkhead do not ." These sentiments can arise in situations where the successful completion of some task relies on cooperation between individuals in different spaces. Sometimes the larger system may fail for reasons having to do with the interactions of the units rather than with any particular unit ; still , each unit needs to attach blame somewhere , and the alleged incompetence of some other unit is the easiest and most understandable explanation . AcrO8811e Brow A sailor standing outside a guard shack glances at the identification badge of each person passing onto the pier . Walking onto a pier between two ships of the Palau ' s class is like walking into a deep canyon with overhanging gray walls and a dirty concrete floor . The canyon is vaguely threatening . It is noisy , and the hulls of the ships seem to box in the whine of motors and the hiss of compressed air . There are trucks and cranes on the pier , and cables are suewn across the pier and suspended in space over the narrow band of greenish water between the pier and the hulls . Floating in the water between each ship and the pier are several crude rafts called " camels " and a work barge. The camels keep the hull of the ship far enough away from the pier so that the broad flight deck flaring out at the top of the hull does not overhang the pier . WelcomeAboard 11 To board the Palau , I climbed a sort of scaffold up a few flights of gray metal stairs to a gangplank (in Navy parlance , the brow ) that reached from the top of the scaffold to a huge hole in the side of the ship . The hole was at the level of the hangar deck (also called the main deck ), still several levels below the flight deck . At the top of the brow was a security desk where the officer of the deck (ODD ) checked the identification cards of sailors departing from and returning to the ship . Sailors stepping aboard turned to face the stem of the ship , came to attention and saluted the ship ' s ensign (flag ), which flew on a staff over the fantail and was thus not visible from the brow . Before visiting the ship , I had been given the NPRDC Fleet visi tor ' s guide of basic information , which included the following instructions for proper performance of the boarding ritual : " At the top of the brow or accommodation ladder , face aft toward the colors (national ensign ) and pause at attention . Then turn to the ODD , ' pause briefly at attention , and say, Request permission to come ' aboard , Sir . State your name , where you are from , the purpose of " your visit and the person you wish to see. This little ritual is a symbolic pledge of allegiance to the ship before boarding . Visitors to the ship wait in limbo at the security desk , neither ashore nor officially aboard , while word of their arrival is sent to their onboard host . The actual permission to go aboard must have been arranged in advance. The ship ' s official gatekeeper is normally the executive officer (abbreviated XO ) . The commanding officer , the executive officer , and the department heads form the primary administrative structure of the ship . Every ship in the Navy is organized into a number of departments . Each department is supervised by an officer . In large departments , the department head may supervise less senior officers , who in turn supervise the enlisted personnel who do virtually all the actual work on the ship . Before embarking , I was required to convince the XO that I had something to offer the navy and that I would not cause undue aggravation while aboard. In a brief and somewhat discouraging interview with the XO , it was agreed that if the navigator was willing to tolerate my presence in his department , I could come aboard and work with the navigation team. After getting past the XO , I made a date to have lunch with the ' navigator . I met him in the officer s dining area (the wardroom ), and during our discussion we discovered a shared past . While a cadet at Chapter1 12 the Naval Academy , the navigator had served as racing tactician aboard a particular racing sloop that had been donated to the academy . The sloop was subsequently sold to a friend of mine , and I had sailed aboard it as navigator and racing tactician for 8 years . The discovery of this extraordinary coincidence helped cement our ' friendship and secured the navigator s permission for my work aboard the Palau . With my prearranged permission to sail , and with the navigator ' s blessing , I waited at the security desk. An escort at the security desk and led me through the huge dark cavern of the hangar deck. We detoured around several parked helicopters and skirted forklifts and pallets of materials . We ducked through a hatch in the wall of the hangar deck and began the climb up a series of narrow steep ladders to the navigation bridge . (On a ship , tIoors are called decks, walls are called bulkheads or partitions , corridors are called passageways, ceilings are called overheads , and stairs are called ladders .) R8CO ilCiI1glie Ch8t- lie World Navigation is a collection of techniques for answering a small number of questions, perhaps the most central of which is " Where am 11" What does the word ' where ' mean in this question ? When we say or understand or think where we are, we do so in terms of some " " representation of possible positions . Where am I? is a question about correspondences between the surrounding world and some representation of that world . Where am I right now as I write this ? I am at my desk , in my study . The window in front of me faces the garden ; the door over there leads to the hallway that leads to the remainder of the house. ' My house is on the Pacific coast , north of the university . I m on the ' western edge of the North American continent . I m on the planet Earth circling a minor star in the outer portion of an arm of a spiral galaxy . In every one of these descriptions , there is a representation of space assumed. Each of these descriptions of my location has meaning only by virtue of the relationships between the location described and other locations in the representation of space implied by the description . This is an absolutely fundamental problem that must be solved by all mobile organisms . Whether the map is internal or external , whether it is a mental image of surrounding space (on whatever scale and in whatever Welcome Aboard 13 terms ) or a symbolic description of the space on a piece of paper , I must establish the correspondence of map and territory in order to answer the question " Where am I?" One of the most exciting moments in navigation is making a landfall on an unfamiliar coast. If I am making a landfall on a high island or a mountainous coast , as I approach the land , I first see just the tops of mountains , then I see the lower slopes , then the hills , and finally the features on the shoreline itself . Now , where am I? Turning to my chart , I see that I had hoped to meet the coast just to the south of a major headland . Perhaps that big hill I can see across the water on the left is that headland . And perhaps that high peak off in the haze , inland , is this peak shown on the chart . Hmm , according to the hart it is ~ meters high . It seems far away and higher only supposed to be than that . Perhaps it is something else, something too far inland to be printed on the chart . Through considerations like these , a navigator attempts to establish a coherent set of correspondences between what is visible in the world and what is depicted on a chart . Some charts even provide small profiles showing the appearance of prominent landmarks from particular sea-level vantage points . The same sort of task confronts any of us when , for example , we walk out of the back door of a theater onto an unfamiliar street. Which way am I facing ? Where am I? The question is answered by establishing cor respondences between the features of the environment and the features of some representation of that environment . When the navigator is satisfied that he has arrived at a coherent set of corre " spondences , he might look to the chart and say Ah , yes; I am here , " off this point of land . Now the navigator knows where he is. And it is in this sense that most of us feel we know where we are. We feel that we have achieved a reconciliation between the features we see in our world and a representation of that world . Things are not out of place . They are where we expect them to be. But now suppose someone asks a navigator " How far are we from the town at the head of that bay ?" To answer that question , simply having a good sense of the correspondences between what one sees and what is depicted on some representation of the local space is not enough . Now more precision is required . To answer that question the navigator needs to have a more exact determination of where he is . In particular , he needs to have a sense of his location on a representation of space in a form that will permit him to compute the answer to the question . This is position fixing . It is what one does Chapter1 14 when just having a sense of reconciliation and the map is not enough . between the territory UpIII Ladder From the hangar deck the escort led the way up three steep ladders in a narrow stairwell filled with fluorescent light , stale air , and the clang of hard shoes on metal steps. The decks of a ship are numbered starting with the main deck. On most ships , the main deck is defined as the " uppermost deck that runs the length of the ship ." On ships that have a flight deck above a hangar deck (this includes aircraft carriers and amphibious helicopter transports such as the Palau ) the hangar deck is the main deck . Immediately below the main deck is the second deck , and below that the third deck , and so on down to the hold . Above the main deck , the decks are designated " levels " and are numbered 01 02 . . . , increasing in number , , with altitude . We stopped periodically on deck platforms to allow sailors going down to pass. Foot traffic on ships generally moves up and forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the port side . However , the layout of the hangar deck limits the number and location of ladders , and in order to shorten the route my escort was taking me against the traffic . We climbed into a small busy foyer , and through an open hatch I caught a breath of fresh air and a glimpse of the flight deck in the sun . Men in overalls were working on the hot , rough black surface. We continued upward , now climbing inside the narrow island . One ladder pitch above the flight deck we came to the 04 level . The door leading to the flag bridge , where an admiral and his staff would work , was chained and padlocked . One more ladder brought us to the 05 level . ~ ui& I1d6I MIt8Y The men and women in the military are divided into two broad social classes: officer and enlisted . An officer must have a college degree and is commissioned (authorized to act in command ). In the Navy , members of both classes believe in the reality of differences between officers and enlisted personnel . The lowest -ranking officer is superior in the command structure to the highest -ranking enlisted person . The distinction between officers and enlisted is marked by uniforms , by insignia , and by a complex set of rituals . The simplest of these rituals is the salute , of course , but the Welcome Aboard 15 courtesiesto be extended by enlisted to officers include clearing a passagewayon the approach of an officer and refraining from overtaking an officer on foot until permission has been granted. E* t8d Rates- R8ti1g8 Enlisted personnel are classified according to pay grade (called rate ) and technical specialization (called rating ). As Bearden and Wedertz (1978) explain : " A rating is a Navy job - a duty calling for certain skills and attitudes . The rating of engineman , for example , calls for persons who are good with their hands and are mechanically inclined . A paygrade (such as E-4 , E-5, E-6) within a rating is called a rate. Thus an engineman third class (EN3) would have a rating of engineman , and a rate of third class petty officer . The term petty officer (PO) applies to anyone in paygrades E-4 through E-9. E- ls through E-3s are called non -rated personnel ." The enlisted naval career begins with what is basically asocial ization period in which the recruit is indoctrinated into basic military policy and acquires the fundamental skills of a sailor . The rates through which a recruit passes in this phase are seaman recruit , seaman apprentice , and able-bodied seaman. Once socialized , a seaman learns the skills of a particular job specialization or rating . An enlisted person is considered a real member of a rating when he becomes a petty officer (see below ). The enlisted personnel in the Navigation Department are members of the quartermaster rating . ' They have an insignia (a ship s wheel ) and an identity distinct from other ratings . They are generally considered to be relatively intelligent , although not as smart as data processing specialists . For enlisted personnel , rating insignia denote occupational fields . A petty officers is not a kind of commissioned officer (the type of officer referred to by the unmarked term ' officer ' ); the label ' petty officer ' simply designates an enlisted person who is a practicing members of some rating . There are two major levels of petty officer , with three rates within each. One moves through the lowest of these levels while learning the skills of the speciality of the rating . One advances through petty officer third class, petty officer second class, and petty officer first class. A petty officer third class is a novice in the speciality ,and may perform low -level activities in concert with others or more autonomous functions " under instruction ." A petty officer first class is expected to be fully competent in the rating . Chapter1 18 The next step up in rank moves one to the higher of the enlisted rates and is usually the most important transition of an enlisted ' person s career. This is the move to chief petty officer (CPO) . This change in status is marked by a ritual of initiation which is shrouded in secrecy . Just what happens at a chiefs initiation is supposed to be known only by chiefs . However , much of what happens apparently makes for such good story telling that it cannot be kept entirely in confidence . It is " common knowledge " that these initiations frequently include hazing of the initiate , drunkenness , and acts of special license . Making chief means more than getting a bigger pay packet or supervising more people . Chiefs have their own berthing spaces (more private that general enlisted berthing ) and their own mess (eating facility ). On many ships the chiefs mess is reputed to be better than that of the officers . Chiefs are also important because they are the primary interface between officers and enlisted personnel . Since they typically have from 12 to 20 years of experience in their speciality , they often take part in problem -solving sessions with the officers who are their supervisors . Some chief petty officers have a considerable amount of autonomy on account of their expertise (or , perhaps , their expertise relative to the supervising officer .) Chiefs frequently talk about " " having to break in a new officer , by which they mean getting a supervising officer accustomed to the fact that the chief knows more than the officer does and is actually in charge of the space and the people in it . Officers who directly supervise lower -level enlisted personnel risk undermining the chain of command and incurring the resentment of a chief who feels that his authority has been usurped . Once one has made chief , there are still higher enlisted rates to be attained . After approximately 20 years of service a competent person may make senior chief , and after perhaps 25 years of service ( being now of about the same age as a captain ) one may make master chief . That is normally the end of the line for an enlisted person . There are, however , some ranks that fall between enlisted and officer . A chief may elect to become a chief warrant officer or a limited duty officer (LDO ). A chief who becomes an LDO is commissioned as an ensign and may begin to rise through the officer ranks . Few chiefs take this path . As one senior chief asked rhetorically , " Why would I want to go from the top of one career to the bottom of another ?" While an enlistee may have preferences for certain ratings , the choice of a rating is not entirely up to the enlistee . Aptitude -test WelcomeAboard 17 scores are also used to place people in various specialities . The fact that people are screened contributes to widely held stereotypes concerning the intelligence of those in various ratings . For example ' , boiler technicians (BTs ) and machinist s mates (M Ms ), who run a ship ' s propulsion plant and who may go weeks without seeing the light of day , are often the butt of jokes about their low intelligence . Data processing specialists , on the other hand , are generally thought to be bright . The ship , as a microcosm , manifests the same patterns of competing identities that are seen among the specialties in the Navy as a whole . From the point of view of the bridge personnel there may be little apparent difference between machinist ' s mates and boiler technicians , but down in the propulsion spaces the perceived differences are many . Machinist mates call boiler technicians " bilge divers ," while boiler technicians call machinist ' s mates " flange heads." Mostly , this is good -natured ' teasing ; name calling is a way of asserting one s own identity . At all levels of organization we see attempts to establish identity by distinguishing oneself from the other groups . This is relevant to the discussion that follows because the dynamics of the relationships among the people engaged in the task of navigation are in part constrained by these identities . 0IIcer R81ks Military officers are managers of personnel and resources. In general , their job is not to get their hands dirty , but to ensure that those who do get their hands dirty are doing the right things . Unlikeen listed persons , officers do not have narrowly defined specialities . ~ officer pursues a career in one of the broad areas described above: air , surface , or submarine warfare . Within that area, there are subspecial ties such as engineering and tactics . Officers are initially commissioned as ensigns . Ensigns have a tough lot . They are more visible than the lowest enlisted rates , and ' " they certainly are given more responsibility , but often a fresh " caught ensign knows little more about the world of the ship than the seaman recruit . ', Way Aro I IIdaSh~ FldIg One A ship is a complicated warren of passages and compartments . frame and is numbered with a code that Every compartment 1 18 Chapter indicates which deck it is on , whether it is to port or starboard of the centerline , and where it is in the progression from stem to stem . Navigating inside a ship can be quite confusing to a newcomer . Inside the ship , the cardinal directions are forward and aft , port and starboard , topside and below , and inboard and outboard ; north , south , east and west are irrelevant . On large ships , orientation can be a serious problem . In the early 1980' s the Navy sponsored a research project to work on wayfinding in ships . The ship is composed of a number of neighborhoods . Some are workplaces , some are residential . Some are officially dedicated to recreation , others are unofficially recreational . The fantail on some classes of ships , for example , is a place to hang out . Officers ' accommoda and eating facilities are in a section of the ship called " officer country ." The chief petty officers have a similar area, called " CPO country ." Enlisted personnel are supposed to enter these areas only when they are on official business . They are supposed to remove their hats when entering any compartment in these neighborhoods . Some passageways inside the ship are major thoroughfares ; others are alleys or culs -de-sac. A visitor quickly learns to search out alternative pathways , because corridors are frequently closed for cleaning or maintenance . On" ~ Leve I As my escort and I arrived at a small platform on the 05 level , to the right was a floor -to -ceiling partition painted flat black . Behind the partition stood an exterior doorway that led out to the starboard " " wing bridge . The partition forms a light trap that prevents light from leaking out at night when the ship is running dark . To the left was a dark corridor that led to a similar doorway on the port side of the island . Above us , the ladder continued upward one more level to the signal bridge . Ahead lay a narrow passageway. Forward along the left side of the passageway were two doors . Behind the first was the captain ' s at-sea cabin . He has a nicely appointed quarters below , but he takes meals and sleeps in this cabin during operations that require him to stay near the bridge . The next door opened on the charthouse . At the end of the passageway, about 25 feet away , was a door that led to the navigation bridge or pilot house. The charthouse is headquarters for the Navigation Department . This small room , crowded with navigation equipment , two desks, a Welcome Aboard 18 safe, and a chart table , enjoys a luxury shared by only a few spaces on the ship : a single porthole through which natural light may enter and mix with light from the fluorescent lamps overhead . The charthouse is one of several spaces under the control of the Navigation Department . Navigation personnel not only work in these spaces, they are also responsible for keeping them clean . Since the ' bridge is one of the main work areas of the ship s captain , it is thought to be especially important to keep it looking nice . While in port , Navigation personnel polish the brass on the bridge . Because the captain ' s at-sea cabin is adjacent to the charthouse , members of the Navigation Department tend to work more quietly there than they might in other parts of the ship . Since the average age of a sailor is under 20 years , a certain amount of playful horsing around is expected in many parts of the ship , but is not tolerated on the 05 level . The Navigation Department is responsible for all of the spaces on the 05 level with the exception of the captain ' s at-sea cabin . It is also responsible for the secondary or auxiliary conning station " " ( Secondary Conn )- a completely redundant navigation bridge located in the bow , just under the forward edge of the flight deck. ' Secondary Conn is manned by the ship s executive officer and a complete navigation team whenever the ship is at general quarters (battle stations ). This is done because the primary navigation bridge in the island is very vulnerable if the ship comes under attack . Modem anti -ship missiles home in on electromagnetic radiation . Because the radar antennae on the top of the island are the principal sources of such radiation on the ship , the island is the most likely part to be hit by a missile . If the primary navigation bridge is destroyed , the ship can be control led from Secondary Conn under the command of the executive officer . Secondary Conn is a space assigned to the Navigation Department and is a duty station for Navigation personnel , but it will be of little interest to us with regard ' to the normal practice of navigation . The ship s extensive library of charts and navigation forms is stored in this space. The Navigation Department is supervised by the Navigator . At ' the time the observations reported here were made , the Palau s Navigation Department consisted of the Navigator and seven enlisted men . The title " Navigator " refers to the position as head of ' the Navigation Department rather than to the officer s technical speciality . Though it is expected that an officer who serves as Navigator aboard any ship will know enough about navigation to 1. Chapter supervise the working of the Navigation Department , Navigators seldom do any navigating themselves . The work of the Navigation Department is carried out by enlisted personnel of the quartermaster rating under the direction of the Assistant Navigator (a quartermaster chief ). Navigating LaIrge . . While a naval vessel is underway , a plot of its past and projected movements is maintained at all times . Such complete records are not always kept aboard merchant vessels and are not absolutely essential to the task of navigating a ship in resbicted waters . It is " " possible for an experienced pilot to eyeball the passage and make judgements concerning control of the ship without the support of the computations that are carried out on the chart . Aboard naval vessels, however , such records are always kept - primarily for reasons of safety , but also for purposes of accountability . Should there be a problem , the crew will be able to show exactly where the ship was and what it was doing at the time of the mishap . Day and night , whenever a ship is neither tied to a pier nor at anchor , navigation computations are performed as frequently as is required to ensure safe navigation . During a long passage, navigation activities may be performed almost continuously for weeks or even months on end . Most of the time the work of navigation is conducted by one person working alone . However , when a ship leaves or enters port , or operates in any other environment where maneuverability is resbicted , the computational requirements of the task may exceed the capabilities of any individual ; then the navigation duties are carried out by a team. The conning oJ Jicer is nominally responsible for the decisions about the motion of the ship , but for the most part he does not make the actual decisions . Usually , such decisions are made by the Navigation Department and passed to the conning officer as recommendations " , such as Recommend coming right to 0 1 7 at this time ." The conning officer considers the recommendation in the ' light of the ship s overall situation . If the recommendation is appropriate , he will act upon it by giving orders to the helmsman , who steers the ship , or to the leehelmsman , who controls the engines . At all times when the ship may have need of navigational information , someone from the Navigation Department is at work and ready to do whatever is required . The navigation team per - WelcomeAboard 21 forms in a variety of configurations , with as few as one and as many as six members of the Navigation Department working together . In every configuration there is one individual , designated the quartermaster of the watch , who is responsible for the quality of the ' work performed and who serves as the department s official interface with other departments aboard ship . Navigation is a specialized task which , in its ordinary operation , confronts a limited set of problems , each of which has a well understood structure . The problem that confronts a navigator is usually not one of figuring out how to process the information in order to get an answer ; that has already been worked out . The problem , in most instances , is simply to use the existing tools and techniques to process the information gathered by the system and ' to produce an appropriate evaluation of the ship s situation or an appropriate recommendation about how the ship should proceed in order to get where it is supposed to go. The navigation activity is event -driven in the sense that the navigation team must keep pace with the movements of the ship . In contrast with many other decision -making settings , when something goes wrong aboard a ship , it is not an option to quit the task , to set it aside momenta rily , or to start over from scratch . The work must go on. In fact , the conditions under which the task is most difficult are usually the conditions under which its correct and timely performance is most important . 1118 A. -&.wl.......I. ldenaty Having said something about how naval personnel establish their own identities , I should also say something about how they and I negotiated an identity for me. In the course of this work I made firsthand observations of navigation practice at sea aboard two aircraft carriers (the Constellation the and Ranger ) and two ships of the amphibious fleet (the one known here as the Palau and the Denver ) . Aboard the aircraft carriers , I worked both on the navigation bridge and in the combat information center . I made a passage from San Diego to Seattle , with several stops , aboard the Denver . I also interviewed members of the Navigation Departments of five other ships (the Enterprise , the Beleau Wood , the Carl Vinson , the Cook , and the Berkeley ) and had a number of informal conversations with other navigation personnel . 1 22 Chapter The events reported here come mainly from operations in the Southern California Operations (SoCalOps ) area aboard the Palau . I also worked with the crew while the ship was in port . I logged a total of 11 days at sea over a period of 4 months . First came a week long hip during which I observed the team , got the members used to my presence , and got to know them . During this trip , I only took notes and made a few still photos and audio tape recordings of navigation tasks and interviews with crewmen . On a later hip , I mounted a video camera with a wide -angle lens in the overhead above the chart table in the pilothouse . I placed a stereo tape recorder on the chart table , with one channel capturing the ambient noise and conversation of the pilothouse . The other channel I wired into the sound -powered phone circuit . Because the chief was both plotting positions and supervising the work of the navigation team , I wanted to be sure to capture what he said. I therefore wired him with a remote transmitter and a lavaliere microphone . I used this signal to feed the audio track on the video recording . Thus , I had one video track and three audio tracks to work with . During my time at sea, I took a normal watch rotation . I appeared on the bridge on one occasion or another during every watch period , including the one from midnight to 4 aim. I was accorded privileges appropriate to the military equivalent of my civilian Government Service rank : lieutenant commander . I was assigned a cabin in " officer country ," took my meals in the officer ' s mess, and spent my waking off -watch time either in the charthouse with the navigation crew or in the wardroom with officers . As to what they thought of me , one must begin with the understanding that for military folk the military / civilian distinction stands just below the friend / foe distinction as an element of the establishment of identity . A civilian aboard a ship is an outsider by definition . It was important that the navigator treated me as acol league and friend , and that the captain normally addressed me as Doctor when we met . Many of the members of the navigation team were also aware that I had lunched at least once in the captain ' s quarters , an honor reserved for visiting VI Ps. Some evidence of what the crew thought of me is available in the video record . Early on , a number of nervous jokes were made on camera about the dangerous potential of the videotaping . In the first 5 minutes of videotaping with this crew , the assistant navigator told the navigator " Everything you say around me is getting recorded for history , for your court -martial . " Welcome Aboard 23 On more than one occasion while he was away from the chart table , the chief of the navigation team explained my work to other members . He apparently forgot that he was being recorded . I discovered these comments weeks later while doing transcription . During my second at sea period , the chief went into the charthouse to check on the fathometer . The fathometer operator asked who I was. The conversation proceeded as follows : ' : He ' s studying navigation on big ships . He s the guy , he Chief makes computer programs for teaching stuff . Like they got a big computer program thing they use in ASW school to teach maneuvering boards . It ' s all computerized . He is the one that makes it . He ' is the one who makes things like that . He s a psychologist and an' thropologist . Works for the navy . He s a PhiD . Makes all kinds of strange things . : He makes all kinds of strange money too . Falhometer operator ' : Yeah , does he? He knows what he is doing . He s swift . He Chief ' just sits and watches and records everything you re doing . Then he puts it all in data , then he starts putting it in a program . Figuring ' out what to do , I don t know . My most intensive data collection was carried out on a four day exercise during which the Palau left port , steamed around the operations area for two days , reentered port , and anchored in the harbor overnight . The next morning the ship left port again for another day of exercises. Finally , it entered port again and returned to its berth at the 32nd Street Naval Station . It was during the last entry to port that the crisis reported in the opening pages of this book occurred . The quality of the recording from the sound -powered phone circuit was poor until I discovered a better way to capture the signal on the last entry to port . The two entries to and exits from port were recorded from the time Sea and Anchor Detail was set until the navigation team stood down . This procedure produced video and audio tape recordings of about 8 hours of team activity . Additional recordings were made at various times during Standard Steaming Watch . In addition to the video and audio records , I took notes during these events of any aspects of the situation that I noticed that could not be fully captured on the tapes. Even with the wide -angle lens , the video camera captured only the surface of the chart table . This permit ted me to identify features on the chart and even to know which buttons of a calculator were pressed , but it 1 24 Chapter meant that many events of interest were not captured on tape because they occurred out of camera range . Transcribing the tape recordings was a very difficult process. At times there were four or more conversations happening simultaneously in the pilothouse . To make matters worse , ships are noisy places . There are many kinds of equipment on the bridge that create ' background noises. The bosun s mate pipes various announcements from a station just aft and inboard of the chart table , and his whistle blowing and his public -address messagessometimes drown out all other sounds . Helicopters may be operating on the flight deck or in the air just outside the pilothouse . It was often necessary to listen to each of the three audio tracks separately in order to reconstruct what was being said , and still in many cases the full content of the tapes cannot be deciphered . Because of the placement of the microphones , however , the coverage of the verbal behavior of the members of the navigation team was uniformly good . Only rarely was it impossible to determine what was being said with respect to the navigation task. I did much of the transcription myself , for three reasons. First , this is a technical domain with many specialized words in it . We know that hearing is itself a constructive process and that ambiguous inputs are often unconsciously reconstructed and cleaned up on the basis of context . Lacking context , other transcribers could not hear what I could hear in the tapes. For example , an untrained transcriber without expectations about what might be said during an anchoring detail transcribed " thirty fathoms on deck " as " thirty " phantoms on deck . Navigationese is a foreign language to most people , and quality transcription cannot be expected from a transcriber who is not fluent in it . Second , since there were many speakers, the fact that I knew them personally helped me distinguish the identity of speakers where it was not clearly evident from the content of a statement who was speaking . Third , and most important , there is no better way to learn what is actually in a recording than to listen to it the many times that one must in order to produce a good transcription . (Over a period of about a year , one transcription assistant did develop enough familiarity with the subject to provide usable transcriptions .) The fact that listening is reconstructive introduces the possibility of distortions in the data driven by my expectations . I will attempt to deal with that by making the ethnographic grounds for my interpretation explicit . Welcome Aboard . In the pilothouse I tried not to participate , but only observe. On only one occasion did I intervene , and that was a case in which I felt that by failing to speak I would put a number of people in serious danger . My intervention was a brief sotto voce comment to the navigator , who resolved the situation without indicating my role in it . It was clear that I knew more about the theory of navigation than the members of the crew I was studying with the exception of the ' ship s navigator and the quartermaster chief . Of course , knowing the theory and knowing the nature of the practice in a particular setting are two quite different things . In no case did I know more about an individual ' s relation to the practice of navigation than that individual . Still , this is an unusual situation for an ethnographer . The web of constraints provided by cultural practices is important both to the people doing the task and to the researcher. For the performers , it means that the universe of possible activities is closely bounded by the constraints . For the researcher , the activ ities that are observed are interpreted in terms of their reflection of the constraints . My many years of studying and practicing navigation made me a particular sort of instrument , one in which the constraints of the domain were present . My interpretations of the actions of the members of the navigation team were informed by many of the same constraints that were guiding their behaviors . But there was more . Because I attempted to continually make these constraints explicit , and to conceive of them in a computational sense as well as in the operational sense required of the navigation team , my interpretations were not simply those of a native . A few months of field work is , for an anthropologist , a rather a short visit . Many aspects of the military culture go unreported here because I am not confident about their organization and meaning on the basis of such a short exposure . I did have 5 years of employment as a civilian scientist working for the Navy , and that gave me many opportunities to observe aspects of military organization . The coverage of navigation practice is adequate , I think , because of the opportunity on my second at-sea period to videotape the navigation operations on the bridge . How different would the story be if the observations had been made aboard another ship ? I do not believe that the culture would permit it to be very different . The information processed by the navigation team may move more or less efficiently , and the individual quartermasters may have better or poorer relationships with Chapter1 . one another , but the tasks remain , and the means of performing the tasks are standardized throughout the fleet . The crews of different ships may meet the requirements of navigation more or less capably , but they must nevertheless solve these particular tasks in the limited number of ways possible . In fact , I made observations aboard several ships , and my colleague , Colleen Siefert , did so on yet another ship . The differences we observed across ships were minor . The ship Colleen observed had more quartermasters available and was therefore able to organize its navigation team in a slightly different way ; that however , does not present a challenge to my framework or to my basic descriptions of the nature of the cognition at either the individual or the group level . Onlie ~ : Stand8dSt8&I7~.gWatch At the forward end of the 05 level ' s passageway is the door to the navigation bridge or pilothouse . It is here that the most important part of the navigation work is done . The pilothouse occupies the forward 18 feet of the 05 level of the island (see figure 1.1). Outward -canting windows extend from chest height to the overhead on both sides and the front of the pilothouse . The windows on the port side and forward overlook the flight deck . All work tables are mounted on substantial bases on a light greenish linoleum floor . The walls , the cabinets , and the equipment stands are thickly coated in light gray paint . The overhead is flat black and tangled with pipes and cables , their identities stenciled on them in white . The polished brass of ship ' s wheel and the controls for the engine order telegraph stand out in the otherwise drab space. The activities of the Navigation Department revolve around a computational ritual called the fix cycle . The fix cycle has two major parts : determining the present position of the ship and projecting its future position . The fix cycle gathers various bits of information about the ship ' s location in the world and brings them ' together in a representation of the ship s position . The chart is the ' positional consciousness of the ship : the navigation fix is the ship s internal representation of its own location . When I first made it known to a ship ' s navigator that I wanted to know how navigation work was performed , he referred me to the Navigation Department Watch Standing Procedures , a document that describes the watch configurations . " It ' s all in here ," he said. Welcome Aboard 27 - I ' 21 " I ' s Rajars D CO 0 table Gyro : Ql J . ~ : : : : : : : _ ' ~ . L roI i netic Mag compass Capfs table 0 l r : ~ ~ : ~ : ' ~ 16 00 1 _ : : : : : ~ l Chart table Capfs Helm chair Pilothouse ' s ~ ' mate s Bsn board Contact Door Door table Door 0 0 Pelorus PelorusFathometer Charthouse Starboard Port P assageway wing wing I I I I I I I I I . . . I I I teamdo mostof and. . dlarItouse.The~ - of lie navigation FigIn 1.1 A planviewof . . pI~ lie . Theheavylinef8p1 lleir workat lie cIwt mb ' 8s811ts Ie, on lie wiIgs, andit lie clld I OI J88 is forwardon' " ship. exteriorIkiI of ' " ship. Upin ' " d~ " You can read this and save yourself the trouble of standing " watch. Of course it is not all in there, but the normative description in the Proceduresis not a bad place to start. It is the Navigation " ' " Departments omcial version of the organization of its work. This document is one of many symbolic forms in which navigators " " represent themselves to themselves and to one another (Geertz 1983). Becausethe procedures refer to objects and places that are part of shipboard navigation culture , understanding these procedures will require us to explore the environment of navigation. While conducting this exploration, we should keep in mind that the 1. Chapter ' descriptions of navigation work that appear in a ship s documents and in various navigation publications must be taken as data rather than analysis . In this section I will attempt to use the ship ' s documents as a guide to the task of navigation . The specifications presented in the Watch Standing Procedures describe actions to be taken and equipment and techniques to be used. First I will present the normative descriptions and try to provide the sort of background information that might be provided by a native of the navigation culture , in the hope that this will make these things meaningful to a reader who is not a practitioner of the art . Later I will present an analysis of the procedures , tools , and techniques that will be grounded in information -processing theory rather than in the world of ship navigation . The Palau ' s normal steaming watch procedures are introduced as follows : Whilein normal condition at - . lie following watchprocedtN wiNbeadhered to steaning as closely as DO as nec8aryby sibJations SIible, modified bey OI1dtheconboIof thewatch stander . In normal steaming, a single quartermasteris responsible for all the navigation duties. The procedures described in the document are taken seriously , although it is recognized that it may not be possible to execute them as described in all circumstances . The normative procedures are an ideal that is seldom achieved , or seldom achieved as described . 1118 Prinary Dutyoflie QMOW When the Navigation Department is providing navigation services to the ship, a particular quartermasteris designatedas the quarter master of the watch (QMOW) at all times. According to the procedures , ThePrinary oflie QMOW is. . safenavigation . ToUIisendheshalt of. . ship Duty oflie shipby81 UIodsav818 )le. (I) Fix. . position ' 1n d me willbeplotted . (1) ~ fixes isavailable atI Bt every hour ocun , afixwillbeplotted (~ w...I infonnation , wtt.Iln open bansit . wiUIin VIsual or~ ~ ofland atI88tevery fifteen mllMites . (3) When , afixwillbeplotted beIri Igswilltakepriority . (I) VIsual . OQ FillInwiUI~ . r~:~ from8IYcombination ofu. foIlowlIg aIrces: (4) Fixes maybeobtained Yi8t8 (I) belriIgs Welcome Aboard 8 00 R8iarranges 010 R8Iarb88tngs CCX1tourtng , Mout hopping ) (Iv) FdIometer Oill oflOtI Idings , bottom Sat M Nav (vi) Omega . I8tiaI obI8vatior (vii) Ce of. leastII. . LO Ps. from~ radarsou. - willconsist (5) Fix. obtai18d ' lie ships trackbydeadrlckoringto a sufticient BIgthof tine UIat8IFId8Iger (b) Project waters ofInternational , shoals 011 fixedd81gers jiI~ ~ tolie shipfromland , violation I IIly st8Idilgintod8Iger departing wli benoticed wellInadvance oflie shipacb legaJ /usigned water I. Items a and b in this document describe the two main parts of the fix cycle : fixing the ship ' s position and projecting its track . The procedures of dead reckoning will be explained in detail in chapter 2. The plotted fix is a residue on the chart of a process that gathers and transforms information about the ship ' s position . A succession of fixes is both a history of the positions of the ship and a history of the workings of the process that produced the position information . The requirement that all fixes be plotted ensures a complete history of positions and provides certain opportunities to detect and correct faults in the process that creates the history . The interval between fixes is set to 60 minutes in open waters and no more than 15 minutes when the ship is in visual or radar contact with land . Near land , the ship may stand into danger more quickly than when in the open ocean. Sailors know that it is not the open ocean that sinks ships , it ' s all that hard stuff around the edges. The increased frequency of fixes near land is intended to ensure that dangers are anticipated and avoided . Visual bearings are given priority because they are the most accurate means of fixing position . The potential sources of position information are listed roughly in order of their accuracy and reliability . The procedure states that fixes may be obtained from any combination of a number of sources. Let us briefly consider the nature of these sources and the kinds of information they contribute to fixing the position of the ship . So. . cesof Infomlltion for PoIIaon FIxiIg VISUALBEARINGS The simplest way of fixing position , and the one that will concern us most in this book, is by visual bearings. For this one needs a chart of the region around the ship and a way to measure the Chapter1 . - direction (conventionally with respect to north ) of the line of sight connecting the ship and some landmark on the shore. The direction of a landmark from the ship is called the landmark ' s bearing . Imagine the line of sight in space between the ship and a known landmark . Although we know that one end of the line is at the landmark and we know the direction of the line , we can ' t just draw a line on the chart that corresponds to the line of sight between ' ship and landmark , because we don t know where the other end of the line is. The other end of the line is where the ship is , and that is what we are trying to discover . Suppose we draw a line on the chart starting at the location of the symbol for the landmark on the chart and extend it past where we think the ship is - perhaps off the edge of the chart if we are really unsure . We still don 't know just where the ship is , but we do know it must have been somewhere on that line when the bearing was observed. Such a line is called a line of position (LOP) . If we have another line of position , constructed on the basis of the direction of the line of sight to another known landmark , then we know that the ship is also on that line . If the ship was on both of these lines at the same time , the only place it can have been is where the lines intersect . The intersection of two lines of position uniquely constrains the location from which the observations were made. In practice , a third line of position with respect to another landmark is constructed . The three lines of position form a triangle , and the size of that triangle is an indication of the quality of the position fix . It is sometimes said that the navigator ' s level of anxiety is proportional to the size of the fix triangle . The observations of visual bearings of the landmarks (direction with respect to north ) are made with a special telescopic sighting device called an alidade . The true -north directional reference is provided by a gyrocompass repeater that is mounted under the alidade . A prism in the alidade permits the image of the gyro ' compass s scale to be superimposed on the view of the landmark . (The view through such a sight is illustrated in figure 1.2.) The gyrocompass repeaters are located on the wings outside the bridge . Each one is mounted on a solid metal stand just tall enough to extend above the chest-high metal railing that bounds the wing . The most direct access to the port wing from the chart table is through a door at the back of the pilothouse just behind the captain ' s chair . In cold weather , the captain of the Palau does not permit traffic through this door . The only other way to get from the WelcomeAboard 31 UIeIrnag8oftwocomP8 UIealid8Ie superimposes FIg&n1.2 A view" rough81alld.te. A prtsmInside reIndicates ontowt~ IsseenBra. UIetelescopic scales sighlTheim. - scaleIsa gyrocompass 's head . toUIeship8Id relative toUIeship bearilgs peater , UIeout. scaleIsfastened port wing position to the chart table is to go aft on the wing to the hatch that leads to the island stairwell and then come forward ' through the interior passageway past the captain s at-sea cabin and the charthouse . This makes it difficult to get bearings sometimes , because it takes a long time to go around the entire 05 level . RADAR Radar also provides information for position fixing . The radar antenna on the ship ' s mast transmits pulses of radio magnetic energy as it rotates. When the pulse strikes a solid object , the pulse reflects off the object . Some of that reflection may return to the radar antenna that transmitted it . By measuring the time required for the pulse to travel to the object and return , the radar can compute the distance to the object . This distance is called the range of the object . The direction in which the antenna is pointing when the reflected pulse returns gives the bearing of the object . Radar ranges are more accurate than radar bearings , so they are given priority in position plotting . In practice , radar ranges plotted as circles of position are often combined with visual bearings to produce position fixes . The surface search radar displays are located at the front of the pilothouse on the starboard side . Each is equipped with a heavy black rubber glare shield that improves the visibility of the display in high ambient light . This glare shield prevents two or more people from looking at the scope at the same time . The surface search radar also has non -navigational uses. The Chapter1 . officer of the deck may use the radar to observe and track other ship traffic . For this , a short range is usually desired . The navigation tasks often require a long range , and there is sometimes conflict between the two users of the scopes. It is not difficult to change from one range to another ; however , in order to obtain the required information after changing ranges, the operator may have to wait for a full rotation of the radar antenna at the new range setting . FA THOMETER The fathometer is a device for measuring the depth of the water under a ship . It emits a pulse of sound and measures the time it takes the sound pulse to bounce off the sea bottom and return to the ship . The time delay is recorded by the movement of a pen across a piece of paper . The sound pulse is emitted when the pen is at the top of the paper . The pen moves down the paper at a constant speed and is brought into contact with the paper when the echo is detected . The distance the pen navels down the paper before making its mark is proportional to the time required for the echo to return , which is in turn proportional to the depth of the water . If the water is deep , the sound will take longer to return , and the pen will have nave led farther down the paper before coming into contact with it . The depth of the water can be read from the scale printed on the paper . Changing the scale of the fathometer to operate in deeper or shallower water is accomplished by changing the speed at which the pen navels . The paper is mounted on a motor drive that moves the paper to the side a small amount just before each pulse . This results in a continuous graphical record of the depth of the water under the ship . The Palausfathometer is located in the charthouse , so the must leave the QMOW bridge to use it . NAVSAT Satellite navigation systemshave now becomecommonplace. They are easyto use, and they provide high-quality position information. Their major drawback at the time this research was carried out was that with the number of navigation satellites then available the mean interval between fixes was about 90 minutes . After computing the ship ' s position from the reception of satellite signals , the satellite navigation system continuously updates the position of the ship on the basis of inputs from the gyrocompass (for direction ) and Welcome Aboard &1 the ship ' s log (for speed) . The NavSat system aboard the Palau (located in the charthouse ) was a box , about the size of a small suitcase that continuously displayed a digital readout of the latitude and longitude of the ship . The fact that NavSat systems must update position with dead reckoning during the long wait between fixes puts NavSat near the bottom of the list of sources of information . With the implementation of the Global Positioning System (GPS), continuous satellite fixes are now available ; the need for dead-reckoning updates of position has been eliminated . The military version of GPS is accurate to within less than a meter in three dimensions . The civilian versions are intentionally degraded to a consider ably lower accuracy . GPS will very likely transform the way navigation is done , perhaps rendering most of the procedures described in this book obsolete. OMEGA Omega measures the phase difference between the arrival of signals from multiple stations . Omega was intended to provide accurate worldwide position -fixing capability . In practice it is unreliable . Whatever the source of the problems , they are perceived to be so serious that the following warning appears in the Watch Standing Manual . 8Ub Itafi~ byInformation : Positions obtained fromOmega areh~ 1ysuspect CAUTION , 1111888 have~ . Inrecent ofcosily8Id 8nban8ing~ ndlngs fromanother source years , a number are!!!: to be madeon unsubstantiate to trustingOrnega . ~ dl8tic decisions directlyattributable fix. wiUI OUt tie explicit permillionoflie navigm. Omega If this system is considered to be so unreliable that it merits this strongly worded caution in the written procedures , what is it doing on the ship ? I believe the answer involves an interaction of the organization of military research and funding with the development of technology . Omega is a system that not only went into service before all the bugs could be worked out , it has been overtaken by other superior technologies before the bugs could be worked out . Still , it was bought and paid for by the military , and can , on occasion , provide useful navigation information . The Palau ' s Omega is located in the charthouse . CELESTIAL OBSERVATIONS By measuring the angular distance of a star above the horizon , an observer can determine his distance from the point on the surface Chapter1 34 of the earth that the star is directly above. This point forms the center of a circle of position . In a celestial sight reduction , each observed celestial body defines a circle of position , and the vessel from which the observations were made must be located at the intersections of the circles of position . Celestial observations appear at the bottom of the list of sources of information . When properly performed , celestial observations provide fairly good position information . There are , however , two major drawbacks to celestial observations . First , they can be performed only under certain meteor ological circumstances . This makes celestial navigation hard to use and hard to teach. Several senior quartermasters have told me that they would like to teach celestial navigation on training missions in the Southern California operations area, but the combination of air pollution and light pollution (which makes the night sky bright , masking all but the brightest stars and obscuring the line of the horizon ) produces very few occasions suitable for it . Second , the procedures are so computationally complex that , even using a specialized calculator , a proficient celestial navigator needs about half an hour to compute a good celestial position fix . Together these factors lead to infrequent practice of this skill . I believe that in the near future the only navigators who will know how to fix position by star sights will be those sailing on cruising yachts who cannot afford a thousand dollars for a Sat Nav system . DRAI The Dead Reckoning Analyzer Insb" ument ( DRAI) is one of the most interesting navigational devices . A mechanical analog computer , it takes input from the ship ' s speed log and the gyrocompass and , by way of a system of motors , gears, belts , and cams, continuously computes changes in latitude and longitude . The output of the DRAI is expressed in the positions of two dials : one reads latitude and the other longitude . If these dials are set to the current latitude and longitude , the changes computed by the motions of the internal parts of the DRAI will move them so that their readings follow the latitude and longitude of the ship . The crew of the Palau claimed that when , properly cared for , the DRAI is quite accurate and reliable . Older versions of the DRAI , such as the one aboard the Palau , have been around since the 1940s. Newer versions that do the same computations electronically are installed on some of the newer ships . WelcomeAboard . PIT SWORD AND DUMMY LOG The pit sword is a device that is extended through the hull and into the water to measure a ship ' s actual speed through the water . The pit sword extends several feet outside the hull and measures speed ' by measuring the water s distortion of a magnetic field . The speed signal generated by the pit sword is fed to speed indicators on the bridge and to all the automated instruments that do dead reckoning : the NavSat , the DRAI , and the inertial navigation systems (if present ). If the ship is operating in shallow water , the pit sword cannot be extended from the hull . In this case, or if for any other reason the pit sword cannot be used , the dummy log is used. When a ship is neither accelerating nor decelerating , its speed can be estimated fairly accurately from the rate of rotation of the propeller . The dummy log is a device that senses this rate and provides a signal that mimics what the pit sword would produce at the corresponding speed. Both of these devices are remote from the location of the navigation team ' s normal activities . A display of speed through the water is available on the forward port side of the pilothouse , but it is rarely consulted by the navigation team. CHRONOMETERS Tkee traditional spring -driven clocks are kept in a special box in the Palau ' s charthouse . Readings are recorded daily so that trends in the behavior of these chronometer ' s can be noted . These records are maintained while time signals are available on radio so that if time signals should become unavailable the behavior of the clocks will be known . If , for example , the log shows that a particular chronometer loses a second every day , that same rate of change will be assumed until more reliable time sources are restored . The diversity of the many sources of navigation information and ' the many methods for generating constraints on the ship s position produces an important system property : the fact that positions are determined by combining information from multiple , sometimes independent , sources of information permits the navigation team to check the consistency of the multiple representations with each other . The probability that several , independently derived , representations are in agreement with one another and are in error is much smaller than the probability that anyone representation is in error . Chapter1 . AtIII Ch8tTable The previous section described the sources of information that the quartermaster of the watch may use while discharging his primary duty : ensuring the safe navigation of the ship . The information provided by these sources converges on the chart table , where positions are plotted and tracks are projected . The Watch Standing Procedures specify additional constraints on the QMOW that bring us to other aspects of the navigation team ' s task setting : 1118 dIarttable8Idnions willbekeptfreeofexhneous material atd tines.Only' " chart (s) in - ,~ will , ' " logsoftie watch , andnecessary ryJMlblcations writing /PIottiIg parlpilernalia . beon' " dIarttable The chart table is mounted against the starboard wall of the pi lothouse , just under the large outward -canted windows . It is large enough for full -size navigation charts and tools - about 4 by 6 feet. Under the chart table are a number of locking drawers in which charts , publications , and plotting tools are stored . A locking cabinet for binoculars is mounted on the aft edge of the chart table . Ch8I8 Navigation The most important piece of technology in the position -fixing task is the navigation chart . A navigation chart is a specially constructed model of a real geographical space. The ship is somewhere in space, and to determine or " fix " the position of the ship is to find the point on the appropriate chart that corresponds to the ship ' s position in space. The lines of position derived from visual observations , radar bearings , radar ranges, celestial observations , and contour matches are all graphically constructed on the chart . depth Latitude and longitude positions determined by NavSat , Omega, or Loran are plotted directly on the chart . A fix may be constructed ' from a combination of these types of information . Navigation charts are printed on high - quality paper in color . Natural and " cultural " features are depicted in a complex symbology (see figure 1.3). The Palau keeps an inventory of about 5400 charts depicting ports and coastlines around the world . A comp ~ete set of charts for current operations are kept on the chart table , and a second complete set in the table ' s drawers . The rest of the charts are kept in a chart library in Secondary Conn . WelcomeAboard 37 ~ Iti CI I8)outf8IbI8 boll above8Id below 1.3 A MvigallonctBt m . . SudIa ch8t kICkId8 klfonn H8b0r. III ~ . ThIscIwt ~ ~ illiii I ~ to S8I ~ Chapter1 . nil Sec OI Id8YDutyoflie QMOW According to the Watch Standing Procedures , . Thesecondary IsVIekeepi1g ofVIelogsofVIewatch dutyofVIeQMOW Those who have experience in the merchant fleet often say that it is not necessary to do all the work of piloting in order to get a large " " ship into port . A good ship driver can , after all , eyeball the movement of the ship and get it down the channel without having positions plotted on short intervals . To say that it is possible to guide a ship down a narrow channel without maintaining the piloting record is not to say that it is easier to do it that way . Even if nothing goes wrong , the plotted and projected positions of the ship on the chart are a useful resource to the conning officer , and while it does require a navigation team to do the work of plotting positions and computing turn points , the task of the conning officer is greatly simplified by the advice he receives from the navigation team. If something does go wrong , the work of the navigation team becomes indispensable in two ways . First , depending upon what it is that goes wrong , computing the ship ' s position and track may become essential to the process of figuring out how to keep the ship out of trouble (see chapter 8 for an example ) . Second , the records kept by the navigation team - the chart , the deck log , and the bearing log - are all legal documents . If the ship is involved in a mishap , as soon as it is prudent to do so, all these documents are removed from the chart table and locked in the Executive Officer ' s safe. This precaution is taken to ensure that they will not be tampered with before they are turned over to a board of inquiry investigating the incident . These records may be needed to protect the navigation team , the captain , the ship , and ultimately the Navy from accusations of negligence or incompetence . The Palau ' s Assistant Navigator offered the following justification : You can go into San Diego by eye. But legally , you can 't. If you haven 't matched all the things and something happens , not neces' sarily to you , it don t have to. One of those buoys can float loose in the god damn bay and rub up along side you . Boy , you better have everything covered here , because they are going to tzy to hang the captain . They will tzy to hang him . Unless he can prove with data that everything he did was right . Now . . . the merchant ship wouldn 't. They would just say, " We were in the middle of the channel . The damn thing hit us, and if there is an expense, fine , " charge the company . Welcome Aboard . Other records are kept as well . There is a separate log for the gyro compasses (with entries made twice daily ), and another for the magnetic compasses. (The DRAI reading is also recorded in the magnetic compass log at the beginning of each watch .) There is yet another log for the shipschronometers . A fathometer log is kept with the fathometer during maneuvers in restricted waters . A log of the ship ' s position is updated daily . 11IeT. . . , DutyofIII QMOW " The tertiary duty of the quartermaster of the watch is to give all " possible aid to the Officer of the Deck in the conduct of his watch . The Officer of the Deck (OOD ) is also normally the conning officer , although he may delegate this duty to a Junior Officer of the Deck. The importance of the relationship between the QMOW and the OOD is reflected in the following excerpt from the Watch Standing Procedures : ~ to takeDRAI81dFau willnotleavelie Bridge TheQMOW rBlngs. 81dcollect except lie OOD fix. asr~:~ -j . If heleaves thebridge NavSat 81d~ , 81dwillabsent , hewi" Inform isassigned UlOuse oftineasPOSIible. (If a Char Quarwmaster hinse If forasshorta period , . reliMd to leave thebridge unless . . . . no. . - ityforlie QMOW ) pr~ The control of the ship is a partially closed information loop . The ' conning officer senses the ship s situation in the world by looking out the window of the bridge . The members of the navigation team also sense the world by looking at it ; in addition , however , they gather information from other sources, and from that other information they synthesize a more comprehensive and accurate representation of the situation of the ship . The navigation team uses its representation to generate advice to the conning officer , who by acting (or not acting ) on that advice affects the actual situation of the ship in the world which is sensed and interpreted . The navigation team relies on the conning officer to the extent that if the conning officer turns the ship or changes its speed in other than the recommended places then the workload of the navigation team is increased . When the quartermasters project the position of the ship into the future , the projections sometimes involve changes in course and or speed. When this is the case, the projected track is carefully planned , precomputed , and plotted . If the ship remains on the precomputed track , many parts of the required computation will have been performed in advance. When the ship deviates from planned track , new computations may be Chapter1 40 required to establish when and where various maneuvers are appropriate . For example , on one of the Palau ' s departures from port an inexperienced conning officer made several turns before the recommended point . This happened because the deck of the ship is so big and so high off the water that from the point of view of the navigation bridge the surface of the water for several hundred yards in front of the ship is hidden from view . When a channel is narrow and some of the turns are tight , channel buoys disappear beneath the deck before the turn is commenced . For an inexperienced conning officer , the temptation to turn before the buoy disappears under the bow is great . Once a buoy disappears beneath the deck , it is difficult to estimate whether or not the ship will hit it . To keep the ship on track , a conning officer must be disciplined and must trust the navigation team. The conning officer has other obligations and cannot always do what is easiest for the navigation team. On one occasion the Palau ' s engineering department detected a rumbling noise in the propeller shaft . In order to diagnose the problem , the engineers requested 50 right rudder , then 50 left rudder , then 100 right rudder followed by 100 left rudder . The ship was slaloming along through 800 turns . This happened while the ship was out of visual and radar range of land , so its position had to be maintained by dead reckoning , a very difficult task under these conditions . THE COMBATINFORMAnON CENTER The navigation team also coordinatesits activities with the Combat Information Center (CIC...
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Running head: DISTRIBUTED COGNITION

Distributed Cognition in Video Games
Author
Institution

1

DISTRIBUTED COGNITION

2

Introduction
The history of distributed cognition is length and can be traced to the first time begun
communicating to other individuals. The ability of people to spread their consciousness is or
to other media is a crucial part of human intelligence. Human computer interaction and
computer supported cooperative work are study areas that have been interested with
understanding work activities for a long time. This has also led to theories that have moved
the focus away from single user to multi users. Such theories and their associated inquiry
methods have been pivotal understanding and analyzing work practice to better design
technologies that work optimally. Multiplayer video games are an example of optimally
working technologies designed to allow multiple workers carry out tasks together. Distribute
cognition is an example of theory that has been used to analyze tasks settings in cognitive
science and systems design. In this essay, the aim is to determine how distributed cognition
works in multiplayer video games.
Distributed Cognition
Hutchins (1991) and Salomon (1997) term distributed cognition as the ability of the
human mind to harness the physical en...


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