An extension of research into intelligence amplification and augmented cognition in individuals, augmented group cognition allows for knowledge to be created, consumed, and exchanged among group members in alignment with their current workload, stress levels, emotional state, and other cognitive factors. Specifically, in 2005, the average knowledge worker lost 2.1 hours a day to interruptions associated with multitasking, resulting in a loss of $588 billion USD a year. Augmented group cognition seeks to overcome these distractions and information pollution, to that organizations can place a priority on conserving group focus and attentiveness on priority tasks.
Significant research is being done by DARPA within the field of augmented cognition, focused (presently) on individuals interacting in group settings. The next natural step involves incorporating elements of cybernetics to allow harmonization of group interactions for maximum productiveness, akin to earlier knowledge management efforts in organizations. Another natural inclusion involves augmented reality, where elements of computer-produced virtual reality coexist alongside interactions in the real-world.
There is not enough research from enough different methods to make the claim that productivity is "lost" without understanding several things: 1. the value of the purported interruption. It is not necessarily a negative value, on several dimensions as named. 2. the nature of multi-tasking skill especially as it relates to the types of tasks being done. One way to assess this is by understanding more about "flow states" (Cziktsentmihalyi)-some flow states can occur during multi-tasking. Reeves has also done limbic system activity and heart rates during online gaming, which are by nature highly interrupt-driven and require alertness to multi-tasking; 3. the nature of responsibilities people have--if they have many, they may need to micro-schedule them, often in response to an interruption.
Famous quotes containing the words augmented, group and/or cognition:
“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We often overestimate the influence of a peer group on our teenager. While the peer group is most influential in matters of taste and preference, we parents are most influential in more abiding matters of standards, beliefs, and values.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Socratic man believes that all virtue is cognition, and that all that is needed to do what is right is to know what is right. This does not hold for Mosaic man who is informed with the profound experience that cognition is never enough, that the deepest part of him must be seized by the teachings, that for realization to take place his elemental totality must submit to the spirit as clay to the potter.”
—Martin Buber (1878–1965)