The sciences of cognition have tended to examine a disembodied intelligence, a pure intelligence isolated from the world. It is time to question this approach, to provide a critique of pure reason, if you will.
Humans operate within the physical world.
We use the physical world and one another as sources of information, as reminders, and in general as extensions of our own knowledge and reasoning systems. Therefore, the computational tools being used to model the mind themselves conduct activities usually referred to as mental. Instead of conducting 'disembodied discovery', computers form part of a network that distributes cognitive tasks and shares functions. Cognition is not disembodied. For Hutchins, cognition is distributed as well as embodied.