In parallel with the development of the theory of distributed cognition, the study of distributed computing has progressed rapidly. This research has both been driven by pragmatic insights into the practicalities of coordinating computational processes and resulted in formal theories of distributed systems. We believe that advances in distributed computation research can be used to refine understanding of distributed cognition by establishing new metrics for evaluating cognitive systems and new methods for modeling cognitive ecologies. To illustrate this we revisit classical distributed cognition scenarios from a distributed systems perspective