LITERATURE

Networks connect people as well as devices, and when they are cheap and easy to use, intellectual tasks can be broken out and performed elsewhere by other people. We are in the initial stages of distributed human thinking that can be directed at mental tasks the same way that surplus remote server rackspace accommodate spikes in Internet traffic.

Jonathan Zittrain is a Professor of Law at Harvard University and the author of The Future of the Internet And How to Stop It. Zittrain discusses the prospects and issues for this future in which human computing is ubiquitous and nearly any mental act can be bought and sold.