Cognitive technologies: mapping the Internet governance debate by Goran S. Milovanović This paper • provides a simple explanation of what cognitive technologies are. • gives an overview of the main idea of cognitive science (why human minds and computers could be thought of as being essentially similar kinds of systems). • discusses in brief how developments in engineering and fundamental research interact to result in cognitive technologies. • presents an example of applied cognitive science (text‑mining) in the mapping of the Internet governance debate. Introduction processes naturally faced increased demand for information processing and management. But this is not simply a question of how many raw Among the words that first come to mind processing power or how much memory storage when Internet governance (IG) is mentioned, we have at our disposal. The complexity of social complexity surely scores in the forerunners. processes that call for good governance, as well But do we ever grasp the full complexity of such as the amount of communication that mediates issues? Is it possible for an individual human the actions of the actors involved, increase up mind ever to claim a full understanding of a to a level where qualitatively different forms of process that encompasses thousands of actors, management must come into play. One cannot a plenitude of different positions, articulates an understand them by simply looking at them, or agenda of almost non‑stop ongoing meetings, listening to what everyone has to say: there are conferences, forums, and negotiations, while so many voices, and among billions of thoughts, addressing the interests of billions of Internet ideas, concepts, and words, there are known users? With the development of the Internet, limits to human cognition to be recognised. the Information Society, and the Internet governance processes, the amount of information The good news is, as the Information Age that demands effective processing in order for progresses, new technologies, founded upon the us to act rationally and in real time increases scientific attempts to mimic the cognitive functions tremendously. Paradoxically, the Information of the human mind, are becoming increasingly Age, marked by the discovery of the possibility of available. Many of the computational tools that digital computers in the first half of the twentieth were only previously available to well‑funded century, demonstrated the shortcomings research initiatives in cognitive science and in processing capacities very quickly as it artificial intelligence can nowadays run on progressed. The availability of home computers average desktop computers and laptops. With and the Internet have been contributing to this increased trends of cloud computing and the paradox since the early 1990s: as the number of parallel execution of thousands of lines of networked social actors grew, the governance computationally demanding code, the application of cognitive technologies in attempts to discover The main idea: mind as a machine meaningful regularities in vast amounts of structured and unstructured data is now within reach. If the known advantages of computers For obvious reasons, many theoretical over human minds – namely, the speed of discussions and introductions to IG begin with processing that they exhibit in repetitive, an overview of the history of the Internet. For well‑structured, daunting tasks performed reasons less obvious, many discussions about over huge sets of data – can combine with at the Internet and the Information Society tend to least some of the advantages of our natural suppress the historical presentation of an idea minds over computers, what new frontiers that is clearly more important than the very idea are touched upon? Can computers do more of the Internet. The idea is characteristic of the than beat the best of our chess players? Can cognitive psychology and cognitive science of they help us to better manage the complexity the second half of the twentieth century, and of societal consequences that have resulted it states – to put it in a nutshell – that human from our own discovery and the introduction minds and digital computers possibly share many of digital technologies to human societies? How important, even essential properties, and that can cognitive technologies help us analyse and this similarity in their design – which, as many manage global governance processes such believe, goes beyond pure analogy – opens a as IG? What are their limits and how will they set of prospects towards the development of contribute to societal changes themselves? These artifi cial intelligence,which might prove to be are the questions that we address in this short the most important technological development paper, tackling the idea of cognitive technology in the future history of human kind if achieved. and providing an illustrative example of their From a practical point of view, and given the application in the mapping of the IG debate. current state of the technological development, the most important consequence is that at least some of the cognitive functions of the human Box 1: Cognitive technologies mind can be mimicked by digital computers. The fi eld of computational cognitive psychology, • The Internet links people; networked where behavioural data collected from computers are merely mediators. human participants in experimental settings • By linking people globally, the Internet are modelled mathematically, increasingly has created a network of human minds – contributes to our understanding that the systems that are a priori more complex human mind acts in perception, judgment, than digital computers themselves. decision‑making, problem‑solving, language • The networked society exchanges a vast comprehension, and other activities as if it is amount of information that could not have governed by a set of natural principles that can been transmitted before the inception of be eff ectively simulated on digital computers. the Internet: management and governance Again, even if the human mind is essentially issues become critical. diff erent from a modern digital computer, these • New forms of governance introduced: fi ndings open a way towards the simulation of human cognitive functions and their global IG. enhancement (given that digital computers are • New forms of information processing able to perform many simple computational introduced: cognitive technologies. They tasks with effi ciency which is orders of result from the application of cognitive magnitudes above the effi ciency of natural science that studies both natural and minds). artifi cial minds. • Contemporary cognitive technologies An overview of cornerstones in the historical present an attempt to mimic some of the development of cognitive science is given cognitive functions of the human mind. in Appendix I. The prelude to the history of • Increasing raw processing power (cloud cognitive science belongs to the pre World computing, parallelisation, massive War II epoch, when a generation of brilliant memory storage) nowadays enables for mathematicians and philosophers, certainly a widespread application of cognitive best represented by an ingenious British technologies. mathematician Alan Mathison Turing (1912–1954), • How do they help and what are their limits? paved the way towards the discovery of the limits formalisation in logic and mathematics 2 in general. By formalisation we mean the shares the same essential properties as Turing’s expression of any idea in a strictly defi ned, mechanised system of universal computation unambiguous language, precisely enough that proved to be the major driving force in the no two interpretants could possibly argue over development of post World War II cognitive its meaning. The concept of formalisation is psychology. For the fi rst time in history, mankind important: any problem that is encoded by a set not only developed the means of advancing of transformations over sequences of symbols – artifi cial forms of thinking, but instantiated the in other words, by a set of sentences in a precise, fi rst theoretical idea that saw the human mind exact, and unambiguous language – is said to as a natural, mechanical system whose abstract be formalised. The question of whether there structure is at least, in a sense, analogous to is meaning to human life, thus, can probably some well‑studied mathematical description. be never formalised. The question of whether A way for the naturalisation of psychology was there is a certain way for the white to win a fi nally opened, and cognitive science, as the chess game given its initial advantage of having study of natural and artifi cial minds, was born. the fi rst move can be formalised, since chess is a game that receives a straightforward formal Roughly speaking, three important phases in description through its well‑defi ned, exact rules. the development of its mainstream can be Turing was among those to discover a way of recognised during the course of the twentieth expressing any problem that can be formalised century. The fi rst important phase in the at all in the form of a computer program for development of cognitive science was marked abstract computational machinery known as the by a clear recognition that, at least in principle, Universal Turing Machine (UCM). By providing the human mind could operate on principles the defi nition for his abstract computer, he that are exactly the same as those that govern was able to show how any mathematical universal computation. Newell