Keynote Address: Giving Ourselves Superpowers

The use of interactive technologies is changing the way our cognitive processes work: from perception to memory, attention, learning, problem solving, communication, and metacognition. In fact, we may be seeing the beginnings of one of the largest shifts in cognition brought about by technology, perhaps even bigger than the changes brought by handwriting and mathematical notation. The problem is that we have largely been reactive. For the most part, technology designers develop what the market calls for without a holistic view of how all these technologies may affect how we think and how we interact with each other. The good news is that we have choices and we can have visions. What do we want the cognitive future to be like? If we can give people cognitive superpowers through technology, what should those be? In this talk, Juan Pablo Hourcade will provide an analysis of how current and upcoming changes in interactive technologies are affecting and may further affect cognitive processes. This will be followed by a discussion of guiding principles to optimally affect cognitive processes.