The Internet of Things and Distributed Cognition

Does your fridge have cognition? How about your thermostat, your TV or any of the myriad other things that you find at home? Imagine this scenario. The bottle of milk in your fridge expired some time ago (say 2 days, say a week). But because of your busy schedule, you haven't gotten around to throwing it out yet. Now, what if your fridge could automatically keep track of the expiry date on the bottle of milk, throw it out when it expired and that's not all, order a new bottle of milk a day before the expiry so that you can have a fresh bottle of milk right on time. 

        This is not science fiction. It is almost reality. This is called the Internet of Things. The ideas of smart cities, smart grids, smart homes, intelligent transportation are all based on this fundamental concept. In my opinion, the IoT is an amazing example of large scale distributed cognition. I think of distributed cognition simply as the idea of having an 'extended mind'. In the fridge example, the fridge performed three cognitive tasks for you. 1) Memory: It kept track of the expiry date for the bottle of milk, 2) Decision making: It made the decision that its time to order a new bottle of milk and, 3) Communication: It placed an order with the grocery store for them to deliver a new bottle of milk. On the other hand, the receptor at the grocery store would perform the cognitive tasks of understanding the fridge's message and then planning the delivery to your house. 

         Thus, the cognition was distributed between your fridge and the grocery store, all for your benefit. The reason that I personally love this idea is that it illustrates using cognitive science to inform technology and processes. The human brain (and by extension, human cognition) is a wonderful phenomenon and the more we can learn from it, the more we can apply its principles to things around us resulting in wondrous creations like the Internet of Things.