Dealing with information overflow
Lately I have to deal with a lot of things in my life. So, I have been thinking about the relationship between information and the human cognitive system. How much information can we absord at a time? How can we filter the noise out of it and keep the useful stuff? How can we manage our time to perform this task better?
You see, the 21st century is a stressed-out century. Everything is running. So do we. In this article we will discuss how the processing of information by humans could be improved in the following decades.
First of all, we must ponder a while on the role that information plays on the human mind and brain. Well, yeah, surely we’ve all heard about the relationship between genes and culture, culture and behavior etc. However, there are other ways to look at this that you might have not thought of.
Take this link at Seed Magazine: http://revminds.seedmagazine.com/revminds/member/lambros_malafouris/. It is a feature that presents 5 researchers who are breaking the disciplinary bountaries. Lambros Malafouris is a researcher at Cambridge University, who has created what he calls Neuroarchaeology.
Everything is running, but maybe running isn’t for everyone 
The mainstream approach to cognition holds that it happens in the mind and that material culture is nothing more than an outgrowth of our mental capacities. Archaeologist Lambros Malafouris is challenging this deep-seated idea with a radical new notion: the hypothesis of extended mind, which posits that material culture is not a reflection of the human mind but an actual part of it. Take, for instance, a blind man’s stick. "Where does the blind man end and the rest of the world begin?" he says. "You might see the stick as something external, but it plays a very important role in the perceptual system of this person. It extends the boundaries of this human—the stick becomes an integral part of the cognitive architecture."
If material culture is an extension of human cognition, our engagement with it has actively shaped the evolution of human intelligence, Malafouris argues. For example, ancient clay tablets that allowed people to actually write down records were not mere objects, he says. Instead, they became integral adjuncts of the human memory system. The invention of such a technology "changes the structure of the human mind," says Malafouris, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge. Rather than happening wholly in the head, he argues, cognition develops and evolves through the interplay between intelligence and material culture.
Malafouris’s unorthodox view has shaped his approach to his empirical archaeological research, which includes analyses of Paleolithic art, Bronze Age writing tablets, and 21st century neuroprostheses. Indeed, one of his interests involves using the hypothesis of extended mind to understand how future technologies might further sculpt our cognitive processes. He calls this endeavor—which bridges archaeology, cognitive science, neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy—neuroarchaeology. "A lot of people might still resist the idea of extended cognition and might prefer to see the human brain as the most important component of the human cognitive system," he says. "But I’m trying to develop a new philosophical approach to how we can study the human mind."
Researcher Lambros Malafouris
Well, as I was reading this, it reminded me of something. It actually reminded me of my own view of Encefalus. I have repeatedly said that this blog is actually an external hard drive of my mind where I can store my thoughts safely for later retrieval. The stream of thought is everflowing, and to catch a glimpse of it is a work that must happen at an instant, before the flow transforms into something else, something new, and something entirely different. So, while the cane is an extension of the blind man, the blog can be an extension of the researcher/thinker/philosopher/anyone.
I am happy that I am not the only person around with this view on blogging. Plos Biology has an article on that: PLoS Biology - Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy.
Of course, Web 2.0 does involve only blogs, but social networking as well. I have expressed some opinion on the matter at articles of my own at: The Digg Factor: The Digg Phenomenon and a Possible Elementary Model of the Core Processes of Digg.
Seed Magazine has another interesting article on how evolution and culture co-exist: How We Evolve. This article presents arguments on how technology, large cities and culture increase the speed of the evolutionary process.
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My thoughts 
"Intelligence builds on top of intelligence," says Lahn. "[Culture] creates a stringent selection regime for enhanced intelligence. This is a positive feedback loop, I would think." Increasing intelligence increases the complexity of culture, which pressures intelligence levels to rise, which creates a more complex culture, and so on. Culture is not an escape from conditioning environments. It is an environment of a different kind.
Both events inched toward a threshold that, once crossed, was soon left far behind. The 20th century, in which it took us a mere 60 years to elaborate the horse-drawn carriage into a vehicle that carried us to the Moon, and the howitzer into a 50-megaton nuclear weapon, was another threshold. The forces that we created are on a different scale than those of nature, which works slowly.[...]
The article also proposes that through technology, man could become a driving force of his own evolution, reaching perhaps what I would call a state of Meta-Evolution.
The second face of Homo sapiens‘ eventual exit from history is the more hopeful possibility that we may yet evolve into our own successors. Unlike our forebears, we are aware of evolution, which changes our relationship to it, if only by a little, for we are still natural creatures. We continue to evolve, in the face of hunger, disease and a changing ecosystem; but our virtual habitat of culture could enable us to become both subjects of evolution and conscious co-directors of it. "It’s occurring," says Ehrlich. "There’s no question about it. What’s frightening is the questions we’ll have to ask."
Technology and evolution
Of course, this conversation includes the possible risks that technology brings, like the possibility of mass extinction by nuclear warfare, but we will not delve into this topic in this article.
The self-evolution concept we presented above is something that can be seen in many places and in many facets. Such a facet is human cyborgs and brain controlled machines. Kevin Warwick is certainly the example of a human cyborg. He is a professor of cybernetics in Reading, England and has implanted electronic devices in his body and connected them with his nervous system. Another example is the famous robot arm monkey
Link: www.youtube.com
There are also clinical applications of this discipline, as shown in the case of a pacemaker in the brain to treat depression through the technique know as Deep Brain Stimulation: New Scientist - Brain "pacemaker" has long-term effects on depression
Link: www.youtube.com
Of course, cognitive science is a part of the whole procedure of evolving our brains and minds. Brain Stimulant is a blog that deals with such issues from time to time. For example, the creation of a Diagram of Brain is a first step towards the manipulation of our brains. Another way to manipulate the brain is through soundwaves: Ultrasound to Manipulate Brain Functioning. Sharp Brains is another blog that deals with cognitive enhacement. At More proof that video games make you smart 
if you remember we commented on an interview at Sharp Brains concerning software that enhances basketball ability: Cognitive Training for Basketball Game-Intelligence: Interview with Prof. Daniel Gopher.
This last interview offers an altenative to the cybernetic approach. This alternative is cognitive training, a natural method of increasing your mental capacity. Of course, because the benefits are pretty obvious, various software has been popping around the place claiming to make you smarter. I hope that in the following years we will see more research into the topic. After all, cognitive training can be said to include every mental task we perform. In one way or another, a mental task shapes our brains and minds to become more efficient at that task. However, some tasks might grant the ability to generalize the ripped benefits to other similar tasks. For example, I have written about how video games can make you smarter: How the Dark Knight, cartoons and video games make you smarter and what this has to do with the Flynn effect, More proof that video games make you smart , Seed agrees that video games make you smarter .
Professor Kevin Warwick
Furthermore, this subject reaches education. I’ll give an example from my own experience. I am a piano player. For one to become a piano teacher, he must first get a degree or diploma of some short. However, is this a proof of an ability to teach the piano to somebody? For example, someone might be a very good piano player, just because he is very talanted, without having any idea of how he should teach the piano to somebody else. You can also read a post I made about school education where I presented the work of Peter Gray and his blog Freedom to Learn: School sucks (you know it does!) and there’s a reason why.
Until now, we presented two possible ways to enhance one’s cognitive abilities: Cybernetics and cognitive training. There is however one more, the chemical alternative: Nootropics. Ritalin, Modafinil, Piracetam and Vinprocetin are starting becoming favorites and replacing the old alternative of cofee. Take these forums who deal with this subject: BrainMeta, Immortality Institute. Brain Stimulant also has a post on a Nature Research concerning the use of nootropics by scientists: Use of Drugs for Cognitive Enhancement.
Nature has recently performed a poll about the use of drugs for cognitive enhancement among scientists. They found that one in five respondents admitted to using drugs for non-medical reasons such as increasing attention and memory. The most popular drug used was methylphendiate (i.e. ritalin) with 62% of drug users taking it. Ritalin is commonly used for attention deficit disorder, but it can basically increase focus in any person regardless of their diagnosis. 44% of users reported take the drug modafinil. Modafinil is approved for narcolepsy and works to increase attention and wakefullness. It can serve as a stronger substitute for coffee, but it is not considered abusable. 15% of users admitted to taking beta blockers like propanolol. Beta blockers can decrease the stress response and are often taken by performers who want to reduce the jitters associated with public speaking. Other substances people used include adderall, centrophenoxine, piractem, dexedrine, ginkgo and omega-3 fatty acids.
Of course, besides all these, there is always, a simpler alternative, even though it might not be as flamboyant or impressive. It’s called time management ;-). By learning to distribute the 24 hours of the day among our occupations in a productive way without procrastinating, we can achieve a whole lot more that we could ever think possible. Right now I make a million things at a time. But I manage to do them all, only by spending about thirty minutes to an hour to each thing for every day, and staying focused at what I do. I managed to learn how to play the electric guitar that way. Of course, should nootropical, cybernetic or cognitive enhancement research move forward, there is no reason why we shouldn’t take advantage of that. All this in the premise that it will be for the most productive spending of our time and not to turn us into 24-hours-a-day working machines :-)
Before this article ends, take this 48 minute documentary from BBC concerning what they call Human 2.0
Until next time…. manage your time kids!!
October 12th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
prescription is meditation
no matter how stale it sounds