Book - Future Minds

Recently I read a book with something interesting to say called "Future Minds" by Richard Watson. By the way, I intend to start sharing what I learnt from books I read on NYHK. And being in Linda Chandler's CV book club, I am committed to reading a book a month based on her recommendation.

Future Minds made the point that the prevailing cognitive environment in the world today will have an impact on how the human functions - and it is not all good news. Fundamentally, the starting point is that as our lifestyles become more and more wired, everyone growing up in the world today, including - nay - especially, kids are feeding information more and more off a screen of some sort. And the trend is headed upwards.

This is leading to long term transformation in our ability to think and process information. Changes are literally taking place in the neural pathways of our brains. One major feature of such a change is that we are used to taking in vast amounts of information, often simultaneously, from our environment but often in an indiscriminate manner. Our minds are being attenuated to living in the white-noise of constant bombardment of information.

This level of information creates a new (simulated, controlled and manufactured?) sense of reality and sense of connection with the world. In many ways, this kind of interaction may eventually be preferred to "messy" real world connection with people. You might already know people who fit this profile - well, there will be more of them.

If in the past, information is power; in this world media, marketeers and technology platforms know that "attention is power". So it is actually deliberate to create a level of dependency on constant access and connectivity. The author quoted marketeers whose holy grail is to create in their users this so-called "constant partial attention" - think about someone who thinks of their Facebook every few minutes and you get the idea. Studies are showing that constant 'shallow' form of connectivity and feed-of-updates from social networks and media create a constant craving stronger than marijuana.

Along with seeking instant gratification for instant replies, multi-tasking and need to be in-the-loop, is a constantly high level of mental anxiety that is being satiated with small doses of "attention". Like slipping into an interstate highway (and forgetting what you were doing there in the first place) humanity in the digital societies are being swept into an auto-piloted pseudo-life of constant busy-ness, machine-like interactions, distorted reality, shallow connections and - taken together, the author posited - ultimately a life that is less and less "human".

Science fiction writers often thought of machines who can think like humans and cater to human lives. However, this beggars the question - what is being human?

Even as computers advance in leaps and bounds as to be smarter than humans in many ways, they function at the mental level. What is uniquely human (for now) are the capacity for deep thought, reflection and original ideas: the same faculties that humans are increasingly being distracted from or not practicing in the digital age. Of course, this does not even go as far as human capacity for feeling real emotions, inspiration, compassion and other higher levels of consciousness. All these, the digital humans are busy setting aside for a surface and digital existence.

At the same time, human challenges will not simply go away. Personal and societal issues will not go away by ignoring it or using a different setting. Managing frayed relationships between people and nations will not go away simply by pressing reset.

What I am getting from the book is that as humans interact more with computers in the digital era, it is far easier and comfortable for humans to develop the skills to adapt to the digital/computer than the other way round. The predictability and set patterns for interaction appeals to the human mind/ego, which is hardwired to crave for patterns, comfort zones and dislike uncertainty.

This development pattern will put a premium on anyone who can stand apart from it, because as computers and digital humans become less and less distinguishable from one another - as worker bees - human progress will depend more and more on those who are still really "human".