Talk:Exocortex

6-26-2013 -- Future prospects should be removed: a) it's content doesn't properly match it's title b) (and more importantly), it's purely speculative, uncited and not in the voice of wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.91.65.31 (talk) 19:23, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I changed the link for the quote about "suffered a stroke in my exocortex" to the google cache of the page, as the original seems to non longer be available.

This page needs some general clean-up to bring it inline with Wiki standards I think. 199.72.227.249 (talk) 15:25, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Current already existing exocortex
So I think many people extend their memory by keeping some sort of memory-digital-notebooks (e.g. .txt; similar to diaries which are related as well), browser-chronic, bookmarks, digital storage systems and posting-histories on online-platforms (such as Blogs and Reddit). Where and how should such information be included in the article? I don't think the article sufficiently covers the currently already existing "exocortex" / externalized human memory. Pls respond, elsewise I'm just going to set up a new section for it even though there's some partial information on it in other sections. Also I redirected Externalized human memory to this page. --Fixuture (talk) 02:31, 16 May 2015 (UTC)


 * Fixuture: There are a number of other terms that may more properly denote the phenomena that you described in your comment. The memory devices you mentioned are all (or almost all) mentioned in the article on personal knowledge management. The use of information technology (IT) to enhance human memory and intelligence is more generally called intelligence amplification or intelligence augmentation. The fact that cognition is always enabled by tools and interactions, even without the use of IT, is more generally known by terms such as the extended mind thesis, extended cognition, distributed cognition, etc. If you consider the Internet to be part of a person's "exocortex" in the year 2016, then why couldn't a commonplace book have been part of a person's "exocortex" in the year 1716, for example? It seems to me necessary to differentiate "exocortex" from these other terms in the same semantic field (in a way that is supported by reliable sources, of course). Biogeographist (talk) 14:56, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

International Journal of Machine Consciousness peer reviewed?
Was the International Journal of Machine Consciousness (which has now ceased publication) peer reviewed?

I also removed a bunch of other bad sources - nonnotable personal blogs, and two sources that don't mention the neologism at all - David Gerard (talk) 09:16, 22 June 2016 (UTC)


 * David Gerard: The International Journal of Machine Consciousness was published by World Scientific and had an editorial board; see This does not guarantee a high quality of peer review; see, e.g., . Biogeographist (talk) 15:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Extensive quotes
The quotes are almost as long as the actual article text. Extended quotes from fiction aren't encyclopedic sources, unless we're painting the concept as primarily a sci-fi trope. I think the quotes seriously need culling and digestion into Wikipedia-voice text, not adding more - David Gerard (talk) 21:36, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of quotes, but the concept does seem to be primarily science fiction. As the article stands, there's no evidence that this word is more than a sci-fi and pop-sci trope, as David Gerard said. The articles from the International Journal of Machine Consciousness and the 2014 IEEE Conference on Norbert Wiener in the 21st Century postdate the creation of the Wikipedia article by seven years and nine years, respectively. All of the sources that predate the article's creation in 2005 are sci-fi or pop-sci sources. The lead of the very first version of the page (04:29, 14 July 2005) said: "Exocortex is a relatively new term (like much of area related to brain-computer interfaces) that is gaining wider adoption via both cognitive science researchers, hard science fiction and technically inclined bloggers." But, tellingly, that first version of the page only cites sci-fi authors and bloggers; the claim that the term was "gaining wider adoption" in cognitive science was unsupported. Ben Houston, the supposed inventor of the term (and founder of a software company called Exocortex) is a software developer, not a cognitive scientist (although he has an undergraduate education in cognitive science according to his website and LinkedIn page). Biogeographist (talk) 00:34, 2 July 2016 (UTC)