Get Real...

       Throughout the article "Get Smarter", Jamais Cascio entertains the notion of a society of augmented intelligence. He differs from most writers who philosophize about the future in that he has a very optimistic and creative outlook in the evolution of homo sapiens. Most, like Nicholas Carr, say that young minds are becoming tainted by superfluous forms of technology that change their minds for worst--attention spans are fleeting, and   the understanding of deeper texts is becoming unnecessary. Cascio rejects such claims by suggesting that although our brains are changing--they are morphing to embody a new type of intelligence he calls "fluid intelligence" (34). Our brains are instead becoming more able to "find meaning in confusion and to solve new problems, independent of acquired knowledge"; our access to the "sea of media" and intelligent machines requires us to think differently.
       Although Cascio makes some great points through his vivid musings of the future of human intelligence, he also fails to stress where humans can go wrong. It is a fact that we are making leaps and bounds in technological discoveries almost every day, however; there are hundreds of other factors that limit our progress as a civilization. War, disease, ignorance, money. It would be naiive to say that in 2030 people "will look back aghast at how ridiculously unsubtle the political and cultural disputes of our present were..." (39). 70 years ago, a disaster coined as the "Holocaust" occurred in central Europe--yet it seems people are still being killed in masses due to religious and ethnic hatred. I believe intellectual development should instead be feared...who knows what kind of twisted ideas super brains of the future will come up with?
       The fact that the author endorses the use of drugs for intelligent use is also ironic. My father always told me: "Peter, there's no such thing as a free lunch in this world". In the case of drugs--you are what you put into your body. I don't believe there's an easy solution to better productivity, and in this case, staying up for over 32 hours. Such added performance can only be temporary--our bodies need sleep to process information and to stay healthy. In the long term, drug users will probably suffer from a loss of memory and information retention, and perhaps even develop more complex psychological problems.