Are we entering the "Cognitive Age"?
David Brooks over at The New York Times just wrote a thought-provoking opinion piece about our perceptions on globalization. He claims we are entering a “Cognitive Age,” an age where people must become more adept at processing and combining information. I like how he attempts to shift the focus from the xenophic-esque sentiments perpetuated by many politicians that attribute the economic woes of the US to actions of foreigners to a more holistic perspective that takes into account socio-cultural, psychological, and economic variables. Of course his piece is entirely too short to begin scratching the surface of such a multifaceted and complex problem, but it did get me thinking about something I read recently about fluid intelligence.
Briefly, fluid intelligence is thought to be the intelligence one employs when combining novel information and solving new problems. Compared to crystallized intelligence, which engages the formal concepts you learn and try to retain, fluid intelligence is, well, fluid. I must say here that I have qualms about compartmentalizing intelligence in this way, but for the sake of the example I will entertain the idea. My senior research partly touched on the idea of the “networked information environment” that Yochai Benkler mentions in his compelling book The Wealth of Networks. In my thesis, I hypothesized that the networked information environment would call for increased cognitive flexibility as we negotiate processing diverse assortments of information. Not only does this imply raw content, but also relational information as our webs of significance expand and change as we enter and leave various online networks. It makes sense that if indeed there is such thing as crystallized intelligence that it would prove less important than fluid intelligence in helping us adapt to this new environment. I’d argue that humans are always in a “Cognitive Age” but I think what Brooks implies when he uses that title is valuable to consider. The old boundaries on information are collapsing leaving us with the duty of organizing it ourselves. Could this mean we are employing fluid over crystallized intelligence?
*My friend Greg pointed me in the direction of an awesome post by Clay Shirky relevant to this topic. Thought I’d add it if anyone is interested.
Michael Lewis expressed a similar sentiment in one of his books, as recounted here. I suppose “crystalized intelligence” could be synonymous to the “self”, given how the latter is largely a perspective on how we view the world which is necessarily informed by the framework of concepts we’ve built to deal with it. Lewis characterized fluidity as a fantastic tool to deal with industry-overturning paradigm-shifts (to use an icky phrase), but the pulse is quickening and similar shifts occuring so often as to blur together these days. It’s really rather stressful, which is why I’m dubious of Shirky’s implication that our “social surplus” will eventually be freed from the coping mechanisms it’s currently invested in.
Thanks for pointing out Shirky’s post, hadn’t seen that – love what he says about social lubricant. If gin was the lubricant for social change during the industrial revolution and television was the lubricant for social change in post-war America, what will be the lubricant for social change in the information age?
[...] For the sake of argument I’ll stick with a very simple, and probably incomplete definition; intelligence is an individual’s capacity to receive and process information in useful ways. With this in mind, the question I would rather consider is this: “What makes one person more [...]