The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload

            More than a book of “how-to” be more organized in everyday life or at work, this is a guide to coping with today’s onslaught of information based on the latest research in neuroscience. It is written by Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of cognitive psychology at McGill University and the author of two New York Times bestsellers: This is Your Brain on Music and The World in Six Songs.

            Although humans have more neural capacity than the apes and other animals, we still are shortchanged, even with the development of writing as a successor to memory alone. Levitin demonstrates ways to organize our homes, our social worlds, and our time, relying on man-made aids such as note-taking, filing systems and computers as a supplement to memory. He instructs the reader on how to construct a fourfold table to help organize information and calculate the odds when dealing with life-changing decisions. He advises how to structure the business world with clearly defined roles for workers and planning for failure. He recommends that our children be educated in the ways of information literacy and creative thinking using approximation as a tool, and encouraged to be more understanding of others and of other points of view.

            Over ninety pages of endnotes provide a path to Levitin’s research and for further reading.

           

The Future of the Mind: the Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

     Michio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, author of several books about physics for the general reader, and host of a variety of television specials on scientific topics. In this book he writes about the human mind; including its past and present - how it developed as we evolved from the apes, what consciousness is – and what we can expect from the mind in the future.

     Some of the possibilities include what we thought only was possible in science fiction: telepathy, telekinesis, creating memories, and increasing intelligence. Then there are those dealing with altered consciousness: entering other people’s dreams, curing mental illnesses, developing silicon (robotic) minds, the possible design(s) of alien minds, uploading our minds to computers, the mind's evolution to being pure energy, and more.

     Work is ongoing to map all areas of the human brain; the first step towards all of these developments. Kaku’s enthusiasm and optimism is contagious, yet he isn’t afraid to address controversial topics. The narrative is written so as to be accessible to the lay reader.