smarter, it will need to be even more effective and flexible than it already is. What worries me is that device manufacturers and Internet developers are more concerned with lock-in than they are with making people smarter. That means it will be a constant struggle for individuals to reclaim their intelligence from the networks they increasingly depend upon.” —Dylan Tweney, California-based senior editor, gadgets and tech editor for Wired.com

“The biggest impact on global human intelligence would be improvement in nutrition and health care for the huge number of people living in clearly substandard conditions. If we now focus on tools to organize information to enhance the evolution of the human intellect, then education would be the next biggest impact. After nutrition, health care, and education, the next biggest impact on the evolution of human intelligence would be widely adopted services to help organize the huge mass of human information, both ancient and real-time, in every known media. Google certainly provides this type of service, as does Bing and even Wolfram|Alpha. All of these services will act as ‘intelligence amplification’ tools in the course of the development of individual human intellects as well as artificial (i.e., synthetic) ones.” —William Luciw, managing director at Viewpoint West Partners, director at Sezmi, Inc., formerly a director of products and stand-up philosopher at several Silicon Valley companies

“To the degree that our social networks intensify and complexify, and to the degree that we retain control of our autonomy in sustaining those connections, our ‘collective’ intelligence will continue to increase. We can and will make our networks and then our networks will make us.” —Garth Graham, board member of Telecommunities Canada, promoting local community network initiatives

“Human intelligence is dependent on human communication. Social growth has always enhanced and accelerated human intelligence and social growth has always been enhanced and accelerated by growth and acceleration in human communication. Follow the growth and acceleration of human intelligence with the development of accelerated communication technology. The first high-speed Internet? Hard-surface Roman roads.” —Jack Holt, senior strategist for emerging media, Department of Defense, Defense Media Activity, chief of new media operations, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs