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CMLawLibraryBlog

The CM Law Library Blog seeks to inform the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law community about key legal education, research, practice, and law library news, with a particular focus on Cuyahoga County and Ohio as well as faculty research interests.

A Brave New World - In 140 Characters or Less

Jan Novak, Associate Director jan.novak@law.csuohio.edu | June 17, 2009 - 12:08

Paul Lomio’s Legal Research Plus blog post, “My Need for a “Focus Assistant” highlights James Cascio’s article “Get Smarter” in the July/August 2009 Atlantic, that forsees the inevitable growth of intelligence augmentation tools to help us filter and prioritize the constant flow of information in our lives:

“The information sea isn’t going to dry up, and relying on cognitive habits evolved and perfected in an era of limited information flow—and limited information access—is futile. Strengthening our fluid intelligence is the only viable approach to navigating the age of constant connectivity….. imagine if social tools like Twitter had a way to learn what kinds of messages you pay attention to, and which ones you discard. Over time, the messages that you don’t really care about might start to fade in the display, while the ones that you do want to see could get brighter. Such attention filters—or focus assistants—are likely to become important parts of how we handle our daily lives. We’ll move from a world of ‘continuous partial attention’ to one we might call ‘continuous augmented awareness.’”

Cascio talks about pharmacological as well as technological augmentation becoming the norm, and speculates on ways we will use artificial intelligence to inform our decision making. “ In a world of augmented intelligence, we will have a far greater appreciation of the consequences of our actions.”

One could only hope. Fascinating and challenging ideas – and a lot deeper than speculating on the next Twitter advance.

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