Elise OldingComplexity seems to be part of the human condition and the way the world is evolving. There’s just no stopping the amount of information that available to us. The controversy over augmented cognition has been going on for some time. But, just like other leaps, it seems like only a matter of time before this technology becomes more accessible and accepted.
Our brains process information that is visual, auditory, tactile and written. Each of these modalities has a limit. Augmented cognition (AugCog) seeks to monitor how much of each type of information the brain is processing and adjust the presentation so it can be processed by another area of the brain. (E.g. – Too much reading – present information in a visual format. ) A computer that adapts to you – my dream for many years! It is a technology that has the potential to actually increase human performance.
One of the biggest annoyances of technology today is the always on/interrupt mode. One researcher, Schmorrow envisions “AugCog everywhere” – Blackberries that know you are in a meeting and don’t vibrate, alarm clocks that can sense your sleep cycle. I give a big “whoohoo” to this! There are many days I feel I need an “understanding” technology that will “empathize” with my current situation, information overload and ease my stress levels! Read my mind if that’s what it takes.
BPM technology vendors take note. Really help me do my job better, attend to the things that matter and screen out the noise. That’s where the next big leap can be.
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For more information see: http://www.augmentedcognition.org/
“A main goal of the field of Augmented Cognition (AugCog) is to research and develop technologies capable of extending, by an order of magnitude or more, the information management capacity of individuals working with 21st Century computing technologies. AugCog science and technology (S&T) research and development (R&D) is therefore focused on accelerating the production of novel concepts in human-system integration and includes the study of methods for addressing cognitive bottlenecks (e.g., limitations in attention, memory, learning, comprehension, visualization abilities, and decision making) via technologies that assess the user’s cognitive status in real time.”
Category: BPM Organizational Change Social Tags: augmented cognition, BPM, BPMS, Social
1 response so far ↓
1 Jacob Ukelson August 8, 2010 at 10:24 am
Elise,
I couldn’t agree more. I wrote a post a while back on process simplicity (http://blog.actionbase.com/process-simplicity) that echoes a similar point for BPM:
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”
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