Collective Thinking

With the rise of ubiquitous networked communication due to the internet and its enhancement by mobile access anytime, anywhere, our capacities for effective problemsolving both on the practical and the more abstract levels have vastly increased. Two domains where one would expect such increases to be particularly noticeable are democratic politics on the one hand, and scientific and technological creativity on the other. The advancement of e-democracy and m-democracy was amply demonstrated by a number of talks given at the Budapest mobile communications conferences of May 2002, April 2003, and June 2004 – just think of the papers by Dányi, Paragas, Kim, and Lai – and the momentous changes occurring in research and development with the rise of the new communication patterns have been lucidly analyzed by Laki and Palló at the 2002 conference. Recall, also, the scientific feat the world witnessed in 2003: the identification of, and the production of a test for, the SARS virus within a matter of weeks, an achievement unimaginable without ubiquitous networked communication. It appears that a new kind of collective thinking has emerged, robust and tangible. The gains we are enjoying are obvious; but might we not suffer losses as well? According to an influential line of argument that also surfaced at the 2004 Budapest mobile communications conference, continuous connectedness, and thereby the lack of extended periods of mental solitude, inevitably leads to superficiality in thinking. James Katz alluded to the concern that due to "mobile-communication activities in classrooms" problems may be emerging such as "damage to attention spans" and to "critical-thinking skills", as well as the loss of "ability to concentrate, to plan, and to work with complex ideas". Raimondo Strassoldo employed less uncertain terms. As he put it: "There is a time for speaking and communicating; but there should also be a time for thinking, for meditation, for contemplation, for concentration, for reflection, for introspection, for internal talk within oneself and, perhaps, with the inhabitants of the self." Strassoldo observes that with the spread of the mobile phone people "only seem to be able to exist as