Podcast #35: Ainissa Ramirez

Science evangelist Ainissa Ramirez takes a look at how major technologies have shaped human culture—both intentionally and not.

By Betsy Brunner | June 4, 2020 | Culture, Ethics, Health, Knowledge, Media, Podcasts, Society, Transportation, Well-Being | Attention, Bias, Binary Thinking, Circadian Rhythms, Communications, Community, Consumerism, Control, Coronavirus, Critical Thinking, Diversity, Education, Electric Light, Emotional Reactivity, Empathy, Engineers, History, Imagination, Invention, Inventors, Language, Literature, Memory, Motivation, Non-Verbal Communication, Nuance, Photography, Polarization, Politics, Reading, Science, Self-Empowerment, Self-Identity, Social Media, Speed, STEM, storytelling, Telegraph, Texting, The Alchemy of Us, Trains, Twitter, Unintended Consequences

The Mind-Bending World of Neurotechnologies

With little fanfare, technologies that manipulate brain activity (both external and implanted) pose dangers to health, identity, and society, even as they achieve medical successes.

By Robert Martone | April 15, 2020 | Cognition, Ethics, Health, Neurology, Philosophy, Psychology | Agency, BCI, BRAIN Initiative, Brain-Computer Interfaces, Coercion, DARPA, DBS, Deep Brain Stimulation, Depression, ECT, Electrical Brain Stimulation, Electroceuticals, Electroconvulsive Therapy, Elon Musk, Halo Sport, Identity, Inequality, Manipulation, Memory, Military, Neuralink, Neurotechnologies, Parkinson's Disease, Performance, Performance Enhancement, Personality, TES, Therapy, TMS, Transcranial Electrical Stimulation, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Podcast #26: Adam Gazzaley on Our Distracted Minds

Neurologist Adam Gazzaley discusses how the brain’s attentional system functions–or doesn’t–when buffeted by digital distraction.

By Mo Lotman | February 6, 2019 | Cognition, Health, Neurology, Podcasts, Psychology, Well-Being | ADHD, Aging, Anxiety, Attending, Attention, Attention Deficit, Boredom, Cognition, Concentration, Depression, Digital Devices, Distraction, Education, Empathy, Enhancement, Exercise, Filtering, Focus, Goals, Habit, Ignoring, Information, Information Foraging Theory, Interference, Marginal Value Theorem, Medicine, Meditation, Memory, Metacognition, Monotasking, Multitasking, Nature, Neurology, Perception, Plasticity, Prefrontal Cortex, Prescribable Video Game Treatment, Psychology, Smartphones, Suppression, The Brain, Therapy, Video Games

iPhone, Therefore I Am

Once we’re all parroting back Wikipedia entries to each other, what unique knowledge or wisdom do we have to offer?

By Isabel Sterne | March 28, 2018 | Cognition, Culture, Identity, Knowledge, Relationships | Efficiency, External Memory, Google, GPS, Individuality, Information, Knowledge, Memory, Overconfidence, Phaedrus, Plato, Recall, Smartphones, Socrates, Wisdom

Podcast #5: David Krakauer on Tech, Cognition, and Social Systems

David Krakauer is President and Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute, a private, not-for-profit, independent research and education center, where he focuses on the evolutionary history of information processing mechanisms in biology and culture. He sat down with The Technoskeptic to talk about the idea of complementary vs. competitive cognitive artifacts—that is, how technologies extend or supress our own capabilities.

By Art Keller | September 14, 2016 | Cognition, Podcasts, Society | Competitive Cognitive Artifacts, Complementary Cognitive Artifacts, Complexity Theory, Creativity, Cultural Change, Decision-Making, Evolution, Exponential Change, Idea Propogation, Intelligence, Machine Learning, Memory, Problem Solving, Understanding