Friday, August 14, 2009

Blogs and Brains

If the notion of a "human cognitive space" (the phase space formed by every human neuron) makes any sense at all, then it should be obvious that new technologies affect it. Writing, printing, the telegraph, and the Internet have all changed history. I suspect it's because they each reshaped human cognitive space.

We're now in a phase where technological changes are reshaping that space almost daily. Facebook is so out of date. Twitter is in. Or is it? Did I miss the latest big new thing? Cognitive space used to change about the speed of continental drift. Now we're on a roller coaster.

This article calls for changes to the way blogs work to keep up with the new shared stream of consciousness. Om Malik wants to combine the speed of Twitter with the depth of blogs. I don't know whether we'll go that direction, but the fact that one can suggest such a thing reveals how much more change is possible.

What would a fully-wired human race look like?

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