H O M E

The history of humanity has changed since the advent of the computer and the internet. We think we have substantial proofs to identify a specific digital intelligence or DI, as a new capacity of the human mind. We cannot pretend that the digital culture has developed a new and more perfect cortex in the human species but perhaps there is an epigenetical growth of new synaptic connections during highly specific digital learning in the individual. A digital intelligence could be processed in cortical areas different from logical, numerical, linguistic or spatial intelligences. And this new capacity extends also to children with mental and somatic disabilities. Cerebral palsy and deaf children were the first to take advantage of the use of computers and communications, and this practice has been successfully extended to many other disabilities. Only autistic children seem to be specifically "digitally impaired". These cases provide strong arguments for a new digital intelligence that can be isolated from other competing intelligences with the help of neurocognitive techniques.

We can tentatively define a digital intelligence in the following senses. First it should not imply a "mental organ" for computing binary digits but a capacity to interact with digital machines , doing word processing or computer graphics, for instance. Second, this intelligence is also about the manipulation of digitized objects: digital cameras, scanners, voice synthesizers and recognizers, digital musical instruments and many other devices that make the "analog to digital transformation" of the physical world of images, sounds and voices. Third, the digital intelligence is based on binary choices. We need only to select an alternative and this choice, what we call a click option, will elicit a whole spectrum of actions if a digital physical system is coupled with our personal decision, as when we navigate on the Internet. It is essentially a heuristical faculty of a very broad reach. We certainly need to create a "digital awareness" in the practice of special education and rehabilitation in order to develop also in these fields the digital intelligence of our era.