0HM150 – Advanced Cognitive Engineering University of Technology
Eindhoven
Lecture 1: Introduction to Advanced Cognitive
Engineering
In advanced cognitive engineering, the focus lies on computing
‘beyond the desktop’ by employing and leveraging our natural, bodily
interaction abilities and embedding computing within the social and
physical contexts in which we live and work. Cognitive engineering is a
method of study using cognitive psychology to design and develop
engineering systems to support the cognitive processes of users. An
important distinction being made in cognitive engineering is between
embodied and embedded. Embodied cognition is the theory that many
features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects
of the entire body of the organism. Examples of embodies cognitive
engineering thus include virtual reality, tangible computing (tangible
objects that are interfaced with computers) and affective computing
(study and development of systems and devices that can recognize,
interpret, process, and simulate human affects). On the other hand,
embedded cognition states that intelligent behaviour emerges from the
interplay between brain, body and world. Examples of embedded cognitive
engineering thus include ubiquitous computing (concept in software
engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear
anytime and everywhere), augmented reality and location-based systems
(software services which utilize geographic data and information to
provide services or information to users).
The world has seen an explosive increase in technological
advancement since the beginning of human existence. 10000 years ago,
human population plus livestock and pets was approximately 0,1% of
terrestrial vertebrate biomass. Now, only a fraction in evolutionary time
later, that accounts for 98%. Research has shown that measured IQ,
tested on vocabulary, verbal reasoning, spatial matching and
mathematical progressions, has gradually gone up over the years (Flynn
effect). The Flynn’s theory states that environmental changes resulting
from modernization (e.g. more intellectually
demanding work, greater use of technology
and smaller families) have meant that a much
larger population of people are more
accustomed to manipulating abstract concepts
such as hypotheses and categories than a
century ago. Moreover, the Moore’s Law
describes the observation that the number of
transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years. As
such, this powers the exponential technological advances that are being
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,0HM150 – Advanced Cognitive Engineering University of Technology
Eindhoven
witnessed nowadays. Within computing, this development can be seen
through three main waves that describe technological advances over the
years. At first, the focus was mainly on the mainframe where one
computer serves many different people. Later, there was the emergency
of a PC where each person is provided with a one computer. Finally, now
the focus relies on ubiquitous computing where one person is services by
many computers. The main changes in computing over the last 3 decades
that are accounted for the shift in these main waves include the
observations that computers become smaller, faster, cheaper and that
they are now mass produced. Also, these computers are now networked,
use location/motion sensing and are provided with input/output
transducers.
A prominent example of ubiquitous computing is the Internet of Things.
Early ideas of the Internet of Things comprised the idea of connecting the
internet to the real world through sensing where databases are filled by
things rather than by documents created by people. So to say, to let the
computers smell, see and hear while operating on ground truth about the
world. Now, the Internet of Things is regarded as the network of physical
devices, vehicles, and other items embedded with electronics, software,
sensors, actuators, and network connectivity which enable these objects
to collect and exchange data. The general idea here is that the most
profound technologies are those that disappear (Weiser). People and
environments are augmented with computational resources that provide
information and services where and when desired (Abowd & Mynatt) and
they are integrated within our daily living and working environments.
Mark Weiser’s vision with regards to ubiquitous computing include
hundreds of computers embedded around us. He envisioned that
ubiquitous computing is anywhere and anytime involving form factors
such as tabs, pads and boards. People would use them unconsciously and
the disappearance is a consequence of human psychology afforded by the
technology. He further introduced the notion of calm technology: it
moves easily between periphery and center, enhances peripheral reach
and puts us ‘at home’. An example of such calm computing is the
‘dangling string’ which is one of the earliest examples for Ambient
Interfaces. Those interfaces lie in the periphery of our perception. It
consists of an 8 foot piece of plastic spaghetti that hangs from a small
electric motor mounted in the ceiling. The motor is electrically connected
to a nearby Ethernet cable, so that each bit of information that goes past
causes a tiny twitch of the motor. A very busy network causes a madly
whirling string with a characteristic noise; a quiet network causes only a
small twitch every few seconds. Placed in an unused corner of a hallway,
the long string is visible and audible from many offices without being
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,0HM150 – Advanced Cognitive Engineering University of Technology
Eindhoven
obtrusive. Ambient Intelligence, on the other hand, is the vision of
ubiquitous computing as described by Philips where core values include
ubiquity, awareness, intelligence and natural interaction. An example of
Ambient Intelligence is a mirror that not only reflects your image, but also
displays the weather, the news and your vital signs.
The Extended Mind is an idea in the field of philosophy of mind, often
called extended cognition, which holds that the reach of the mind need
not end at the boundaries of skin and skull. Tools, instrument and other
environmental props like paper, calculators and navigators can under
certain conditions also count as proper parts of our minds. It thus involves
the question on how we appropriate cognitive technologies (‘my pencil
and I are smarter than I am’, Einstein). In summary, the extended mind
approach argues that thinking involves not only our brain, but also our
body and our environment. Our brain is opportunistic whenever possible.
Memory tools work like transactive memory, where we offload effort to
technology (e.g. Google, digital camera) while remembering where to find
stuff but not what it was we tried to remember. As our worlds become
smarter and get to know us better and better, it becomes harder and
harder to say where the world stops and the person begins. According to
Clark, we are human-technology symbionts (Natural Born Cyborgs) as
we are thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are
spread across biological brain and non-biological circuitry. According to
him, it is our special character as human beings to be forever driven to
create, co-opts, annex and exploit non-biological props and scaffoldings.
Thus, we blur the boundary between user and technology as it is not
always clear when we use ‘tools’ and when they become part of who we
are.
Carr, N. (2008). Is Google Making Us Stupid? The Atlantic,
July/August 2008
“My mind is changing, I’m not thinking the way I used to think and deep
reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” The Net is
becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that
enters my mind. The advantages are many, but it comes at a price. It
supplies the stuff of thought, but it also shapes the process of thought. It’s
chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind
expects to take in information the way the Net distributes is; in a swiftly
moving stream of particles. The more you use the Web, the more you have
to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.
We still await the long-term neurological and psychological experiments
that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use affects cognition.
A study suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the
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, 0HM150 – Advanced Cognitive Engineering University of Technology
Eindhoven
way we read and think. We are ‘power browsing’ instead of reading in
the traditional sense/deep reading. It’s a different kind of reading, and
behind it lies a different kind of thinking – perhaps even a new sense of
the self. Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections
that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely
disengaged. Reading is not an instinctive skill for human beings, and the
media or other technologies we use in learning and practicing the craft of
reading play an important part in shaping the neural circuits inside our
brains. We can expect that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be
different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed
works. Our brain is very plastic as we inevitably begin to take on the
qualities of the technologies that we use.
Nietzsche concluded that he changed his writing style when he started
using a typewriter. “Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our
thoughts.” Intellectual technologies: the tools that extend our mental
rather than our physical capacities. We begin to take the qualities of those
technologies (e.g. when the clock was introduced, we stopped listening to
our senses and started obeying the clock). With the Net as a medium, we
scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration. Never has
communications systems played so many roles in our lives – or exerted
such broad influence over our thoughts – as the Internet does today.
There’s been little consideration of how it’s reprogramming us.
What Taylor did for the work of the hand, Google is doing for the work of
the mind ( = creating a utopia of perfect efficiency). Google’s mission is
“to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible
and useful” and “to be the perfect search engine.” The founders have the
desire to turn the search engine into an artificial intelligence. “Certainly if
you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an
artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” They
have the idea that our brains are outdated computers, and that our minds
should operate as high-speed data-processing machines. Just as there’s a
tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to
expect the worst of every new tool or machine. You should be sceptical of
my scepticism. However, we can lose our abilities to deep read, which is
indistinguishable from deep thinking. If we fill up quiet spaces with
content, we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in
our culture. We are turning into pancake people: spread across wide and
thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the
mere touch of a button. As we come to rely on computers to mediate our
understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into
artificial intelligence.
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