Art and Culture, Industrial Design

Neurocompetitive Advantage is not a new topic by any means, its as old as apprenticeship and universities, however its been popping up in mainstream media more frequently than usual, mainly because of the onslaught of new cognoceuticals and neuro-enhancers being developed and the hacking of existing drugs for unintended uses. I’m not talking ginkgo and ginseng, but little Lance Mindstrongs dipping into their siblings prescriptions with dreams of rival crushing insights. Interesting to think of the various scenarios like NeuroMutants, the Enlightened few (the divide) to the Kumbaya: Everybody Up relaities that might emerge out of a climate of chem-spiked, pervasive neurocompetition. I’ve read too many comic books to eat up the hype, but can almost taste the new divides, casts, classes, extremists, cognofamines, nuerowars and outcasts just by looking at the existing ingredients blended together with human nature.

Its obvious how in a knowledge economy neuroenhancers may be favorable cosmetics of the mind (Lockhart), but who is curating an easily digestible lo/no-tech Being Smart for Dummies anthology? Or an open source natural neuroceutical?  Does MIT open courseware count?  Where are the resources for Hacking Intelligence that don’t stink like infomercial self help charlatanry?   (this ones cool- Hacking Knowledge http://oedb.org/library/college-basics/hacking-knowledge)

Calling it the “Internet” doesn’t cut it, its to much work for most, and generally if you want the real deal you have to pay up large. I’m no Luddite, but maybe we need to get off our high horse pills and revisit our approach to intelligence.

Sociality, Seduction and NeuroCorrosion? I wonder, have the cultural pressures and resulting time drain of “being social” online eroded our natural non-pharma driven intellectual trainings? Is this driving our thirst for a path of least resistance to “genius.”
In the future will we blame this ages form of larval, immature, rushed business driven social media for enabling corrosive forms of groupthink, retweeted cognobalderdash, and viral idiocy in the guise of collective intelligence? Thoughts?

Will designer Brains Divide Humanity http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227083.700-will-designer-brains-divide-humanity.html?full=true&print=true

Nuerocompetitive advantage http://www.corante.com/brainwaves/archives/2003/10/10/neurocompetitive_advantage.php (via MCL)

Neuro Trends (whitepaper abstracts) NeuroReport: http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/pages/default.aspx

Brain Gain: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/04/27/090427fa_fact_talbot?currentPage=all (via Lockhart)