THE SCIENCE OF THE FLASH – AUGMENTED COGNITION
Focusing specifically on the concept of augmented cognition that was introduced in issue #2 of the series, SPEEDFORCE.org decided to dig a little deeper into the science behind THE FLASH – with an exclusive interview featuring Dr. Peter A. Hancock, Provost’s Distinguished Research Professor at The University of Central Florida and member of the Augmented Cognition International Society.
“Humans have already evolved to use such abilities. You don’t need to react at ‘super-speed’ if you can anticipate,” said Hancock. “This is, in part, what the prefrontal cortex is for – ‘getting out ahead of time.’ Most of our memory is now being ported to the external technology (e.g., web sources etc). Soon, we will have a growth of equivalent ‘apps’ for certain forms of decision-making (they will come in as advisories, e.g., ‘what should I eat and where today?), the big issue will be attention. We still don’t know enough about attention and the current theories need to be revised. Part of the answer may be biochemical as much as neurocognitive solutions. Neuroscience promises much but progress is actually slow because this is a such a difficult problem. ‘Super-speed’ is also relative. Once everyone works at that rate it will just be the new ‘normal.’ ‘Pre-cognitive’ will simply mean knowing much more concerning the world about you. You can argue people show vast individual differences in this form of ‘awareness’ now.”
