The Technopsychology of intelligence Part One

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The Technopsychology of intelligencePart One

• Derrick de Kerckhove

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We shape our tools and
thereafter, our tools shape us Marshall McLuhan
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Effects of language under different media
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Three Speeds
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The marriage of language and electricity
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Acceleration at warp speed

• There are two kinds of acceleration
• SPEED ( access/bandwidth/processing time)
• CONNECTIVITY (volume of interactions)

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Speed

• 1844 Telegraph (five bauds)
• 1 baud 1 bit per second
• 1876 Telephone (2000 bauds)
• 1915 Continental copper wires (30000 bauds)
• 1940 Co-axial circuits (7.6 million bauds)
• 1962 Telstar (700000 bauds - two-way - all
  connected)
• 1983 Early fiber technology (45 million bauds)
• 1996 New photonics 100 billion baud
• 2000 and beyond Giga, tetra, peta bauds.

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Volume

• Telegraph city-to-city
• Telephone business-to-business, home-to-home,
  body-to-body
• Internet one-to-all/ all-to-all/ all-to-one
• World Wide Web linking the contents
• Acceleration and take-off wirelessness

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Networking

• Networking provides the metaphor for late
  twentieth century culture it speaks of
  interactivity, decentralization, the layering of
  ideas from a multiplicity of sources. Networking
  is the provenance of far-reaching connectivity
  and, mediated, accelerated, and intensified by
  the computer, it leads to the amplification of
  thought, enrichment of the imagination, both
  broader and deeper memory, and the extensions of
  our human senses. Computer networking means the
  linking person-to-person, mind-to-mind,
  memory-to-memory regardless of their dispersal in
  space and their dislocation in time.

Roy Ascott 1989
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Electricity

• 1837 Electricity weds the alphabet
• Maximum speed multiplying and distributing
  maximum complexity
• Relentless refinement of the code from the 25
  letters of the alphabet to 0/1 via Morses long,
  short, naught
• O/1 becomes the smallest common denominator of
  all our experiences, physical and mental
• Telegraph Language accelerated, amplified,
  redistributed by electricity

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The digital is Phase Two of Electricity

• Phase One ANALOG
• Heat, light, amplification and instant
  transportation of signal
• Telephone, radio, television Language
  accelerated, amplified and redistributed
• Easier to conceptualize and thus to
  industrialize, wired communications precede
  wireless ones
• Phase Two DIGITAL
• Information, knowledge and instant reconstruction
  of signal
• Computers, networks, simulation Electricity
  emulating command and control operations
• Take-off point the Wireless Revolution

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Key biases of electricity

• Globality
• Convergence
• Integration
• Decentralization
• Real-time
• Connectivity

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Biases exclusive or dominant in the digital

• Globality
• Convergence
• Integration
• Decentralization
• Real-time
• Connectivity

• Virtuality
• Intelligence
• Interactivity
• Transparency
• Random Access
• Hypertextuality

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Biases specific to each electronic technology
cluster

• ANALOG (ALL)
• Globality
• Convergence
• Integration
• Decentralization
• Real-time
• Connectivity

• DIGITAL
• Virtuality
• Intelligence
• Interactivity
• Transparency
• Random Access
• Hypertextuality

• WIRELESS
• True ubiquity
• Glocalism
• Immersion
• Total surround
• Always on
• Implosiveness

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The a versus the e principle

• Dynamic
• Digital
• Immersive
• Virtualized
• Implosive
• Hypertext
• Multimedia
• Interactive
• Connected

• Static
• Analog
• Frontal
• Spatialized
• Explosive
• Text
• Desensorialized
• Internalized
• Private identity

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Screenology
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Three Screen Profile
Number in Home
Share of Screens
30 38 23 9
Q.1
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Change in Time Spent with Three Screens versus
2-3 Years Ago
Net Change 33 -22 47
Q.3
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The classic screen as opposed to the dynamic
screen

• 2D versus 3D
• Frontal versus immersive
• Light on versus light through
• Replay versus remake
• Passive versus interactive
• Screen-out versus total surround
• Single versus multiple screens (Windows,
  Picture-In-Picture)
• Disappearance of the screen in VR

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• Emigration of the mind from the head to the
  screen
• The screen is where physical, mental and virtual
  space coincide
• Recovery of control from the zapper to the
  computer
• Resensorialization of communications
• Sharing the responsibility of making sense with
  the screen

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Three spaces, physical, mental and cyberspace
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Mind-machine-direct-connect

• The image as close to thought as possible
• Closing the gap between the mind and external I-P
• Every move, every glance a command (hand/
  eye/brain ratio)
• Emigration of mind from head to screen
• Wearing the world on/in your skin

Mark Ngui
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The technobiology of electricity

• Electricity is both within and without the human
  body
• In the analogue mode, electricity emulates
  muscular functions of the body
• In the digital mode, it emulates cognition
• All digital appliances are extensions of our
  senses and our communications capabilities
• Some of them such as the cell phone bring
  electric back to the body

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The technobiology of wirelessness

• Wireless means permanent, ubiquitous access to
  all our extensions
• The cellular phone spells the integration of the
  whole world within the body of the user
• Wearable computing heralds the quasi
  internalization of this process

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The technopsychology of globality

• Change of self-image (body-image)
• Change of scale
• Change of physical distribution
• Change of time (macro and micro scales)

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Hypertextual thinking

• Your horoscope
• The I Ching
• Palabra, dreaming, prayer, simulation
• Hypertextual thinking an issue of time, not
  space
• The only time that counts is NOW
• All links and connections are made in REAL TIME
• All simulations are manner of prediction
  (pregestual)
• Under electronic conditions, the delay between
  project and realization is shortening

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Text, context and hypertext

• Role of text internalizing and silencing speech
• Power of context in oral societies
• Vectorial biases of text and context
• Ambiguous status of hypertext
• silent but shared as speech
• spontaneous but archived
• private but made public

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Connectivity
Connective not collective Embodied (interactions
face-to-face) Emergent (Francisco
Varela) Intersubjective Dynamic Thought is not
internalized language, but language is
externalized thought
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Distributed cognition

• Cognitions are situated and distributed rather
  than decontextualized tools and products of the
  mind (G. Solomon)
• Rather than thinking of cognition as an isolated
  event that takes place inside ones head,
  cognition should be looked at as a distributed
  phenomenon, one that goes beyond the boundaries
  of a person to include environment, artifacts,
  social interactions, and culture (Hutchins
  Hollan)

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Principles (Hutchins)

• 1. Cognition is mediated by tools
• 2. Tool mediation in cognition means that
  cognition is rooted in the artificial
• 3. Cognition is a social affair that involves
  delicate variations and shades of communication,
  learning and interpersonal interactions

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Hutchins and Hollan

• Cognitive processes may be distributed among
  members of a social group
• Cognitive processes may involve coordination
  between internal and external (environmental
  and/or material) structure
• Cognitive processes may be distributed through
  time in a way that the end results (products) or
  earlier evens can change the nature of events
  that come later.

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Cole Engstrom

• 1. Cultural mediation has a recursive,
  bi-directional effect mediated activity
  simultaneously modifies both the environment and
  the subject
• 2. Cultural artifacts are both material and
  symbolic they regulate interactions with ones
  environment and ones self. In this respect, they
  are tools broadly conceived and the master tool
  is language

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Cole Engstrom

• 3. The cultural environment into which children
  are born contains the accumulated knowledge of
  prior generations. In mediating their behavior
  through these objects, human beings benefit not
  only from their own experience, but from that of
  their forebears.
• 4. A natural unit of analysis for the study of
  human behavior is activity systems, historically
  conditioned systems of relations among
  individuals and their proximal, culturally
  organized environments.

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Person-to-person connectivity
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Individuals become more effective when they
interact, so too do groupsClay Shirky
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Ryerson Study

• 75 criteria
• Number one teamwork (4.69/5 )
• Second how to present oneself (3.87)
• Third how to make a business plan (3.54)
• Tenth network experience

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Connected intelligence (CI)

• Idea inspired by networks but not limited to
  networks
• Networked vs broadcast
• Focused self-organization
• Trainable

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CI communities

• Creating a Knowledge community rather than a
  knowledge database
• Building relevance across generations
• CI Workshops
• Ownership into the problem
• Networking across fields
• Role-playing
• Digital supports

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Training CI

• CI is always capable of focus and increased
  efficiency
• Just as traditional techniques of meditation,
  concentration and mind-training have succeeded in
  the past with private minds, it is possible to
  train connected minds and hearts to multiply
  by each other

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Principles of CI workshops

• Creating teams in and between departments
• Trusting non-experts
• Creating digital contents for export
• Archiving and sharing contents
• Giving roles to each member
• Searching for real solutions to real questions
• Sharing in the ownership of solutions
• Encouraging coopetition among and between
  departments

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Donald Norman

• When the intellect is tightly coupled to the
  world, decision making and action can take place
  within the context established by the physical
  environment, where the structures can often act
  as a distributed intelligence, taking some of the
  memory and computational burden of the human.