Written by Kim Solez, MD

Much attention has been directed toward the impact of the digital age on our daily lives, ignoring the human characteristics necessary to cope with this transformation. Now, however, a new form of human digital intelligence is emerging to adjust to this digital lifestyle.  

We have come to recognize that there is no single IQ. Different people develop different talents, partly from innate ability and partly from practice and hard work. Howard Gardner, Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has described eight different types of human intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, interpersonal, intra-personal, and naturalistic.

There are rigorous criteria for each type of intelligence, including two particularly difficult tests: potential isolation by brain damage and the existence of idiot-savants, prodigies, and other exceptional individuals. Internationally known psychologist Daniel Goleman has added a ninth form of intelligence: emotional intelligence. Today I postulate a tenth form of intelligence: digital intelligence. 

Digital intelligence is not just about computers. Fishermen in rural India using cellphones to negotiate a better price for their fish may never have seen a conventional computer but are using digital intelligence. Digital intelligence is an emerging form of human intelligence that can process digital information effectively. It is characterized by logical statements, a strong multitasking ability, and an ability to identify and take advantage of potential connections, to separate information into transformable chunks and reassemble them to new purposes. 

Digital intelligence meets all the criteria to qualify as a type of human intelligence. As an example, psychology research by Joshua Rubinstein, PhD, has shown that most people lose time and are less efficient when switching between tasks. By contrast, a person with high digital intelligence is not only able to seamlessly switch tasks but can manage two tasks at once, such as singing a familiar song to a child while planning a new business strategy.  

The ability to identify and take advantage of potential connections is another attribute of digital intelligence. Reasoning in the digital age has much to do with "bricolage,” the practice of transforming "found" materials by incorporating them and reassembling them into something new, as in mashups and the evolving social media of Web 2.0.  

Individuals with prefrontal cortex damage in the brain lose the “essential executive” and have trouble doing task switching, a key element of digital intelligence. Conversely, there’s also such a thing as the “exceptional individual.” We can consider Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, as an individual with exceptional digital intelligence. He is purported to have a particularly poor ability to remember names and faces, and he created the first local Web (which became the World Wide Web) as a memory aid. 

Although the digital age is new, the kind of intelligence needed to cope with it has been evolving throughout human history. The capacity for rapid task switching, recognizing connectedness, and creating logical statements, together with improvisation and bricolage have always conferred evolutionary advantage. Now as we move through the 21st Century and beyond, the digital age is profoundly remodeling us, culturally, physically, and intellectually. Digital intelligence is the force behind that transformation.

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