Journal article
The Internet as cognitive enhancement
- Abstract:
- The Internet has been identified in human enhancement scholarship as a powerful cognitive enhancement technology. It offers instant access to almost any type of information, along with the ability to share that information with others. The aim of this paper is to critically assess the enhancement potential of the Internet. We argue that unconditional access to information does not lead to cognitive enhancement. The Internet is not a simple, uniform technology, either in its composition, or in its use. We will look into why the Internet as an informational resource currently fails to enhance cognition. We analyze some of the phenomena that emerge from vast, continual fluxes of information – information overload, misinformation and persuasive design – and show how they could negatively impact users’ cognition. Methods for mitigating these negative impacts are then advanced: individual empowerment, better collaborative systems for sorting and categorizing information, and the use of artificial intelligence assistants that could guide users through the informational space of today’s Internet.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 624.8KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s11948-020-00210-8
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Science and Engineering Ethics More from this journal
- Volume:
- 26
- Pages:
- 2345-2362
- Publication date:
- 2020-04-06
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-01-10
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1471-5546
- ISSN:
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1353-3452
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:1082423
- UUID:
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uuid:bcb934c9-927a-48d6-ae91-810e5c66af76
- Local pid:
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pubs:1082423
- Source identifiers:
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1082423
- Deposit date:
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2020-01-14
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Voinea et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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