Do you remember those cheesy sci-fi movies from 80's where gray mask wearing alien invaders from Alfa-Centauri roll their eyes upwards and access their "Collective Cognitive"? The idea probably started from Heinlein's "Puppet Masters" but firmly established itself as one of the most inhuman characteristics the outter-space-visitors would possess. It nicely plays onto our natural distrust towards any kind of hive society. As creatures of habit, although we greatly enjoy group settings, we're fundamentally very private. The irony though is that the scary inhuman "collective cognitive" is slowly creeping into our everyday lives and in a few more years will irreversibly have itself established amongst the most "advanced", "progressive", post-modern humans. Think about this next time you search the Web for a quick answer to "Why am I so tired?" (top auto-complete question on the google search when you type "why am", 48 million hits), log onto Facebook to ensure your ex's future ex is ugly as a bat or inquire about the local scenery in a strange city on Yelp. We no longer expect the answers, even to the rudimentary questions vital to our everyday existence, to be located behind our lobes, we expect them to come from the "collective cognitive" and more so. Here's a few heart-warming examples obtained from the Google's autocomplete feature by typing the first word of the sentence:
- Is Facebook down - 271 million
- Does he like me - 566 million
- Do not call list - 334 million
- Should I get a flu shot - 1.7 million
- How to tie a tie - 36 million
- What does my name mean - 58 million
- When is daylight savings - 2 million
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