Introduction: Gold mines and land mines in cognitive technology

Technology has long played an important role in human activity. However, with technological advances we are witnessing major changes in the role technology plays. These changes are especially revolutionary in two senses: First, new tech nologies are playing greater than ever roles in human cognitive activities. These activities include: 1. New levels of cognitive interactions between people. These interactions, both quantitatively and qualitatively, are at an intensity and scale that allow new forms of cognition to emerge, such as distributed cognition. 2. Technol ogies that cognitize with us, thus playing an active part in our cognitive processes and constituting themselves as inherent components in human cognition. 3. These new technologies do not only cognitize with us, but they also cognitize for us. In this sense they go beyond supplementing human cognition; rather than playing a facilitating role they actually take over and replace certain aspects in human cognition altogether. Whether these technologies give rise to new forms of cognition, such as dis tributed cognition, or they cognitize with us and for us, these technologies mark a fundamental change in the role they play in human activities. Such technologies are best termed cognitive technologies (Dascal and Dror 2005). The second sense in which these technologies revolutionize their role is that they are actively affecting and changing human cognition itself. In the past when they were predominantly a tool to aid humans, they had a minimal role in shap ing cognition. They only played an instrumental role in executing the product of human cognition. Now, with increasing emergence and use of cognitive technolo gies, they are more integrated in the cognitive processes themselves. As such, they play an active and constituting part in human cognition. Since human cognitive processes are adaptive, dynamic, and pragmatic, they do not work in isolation from cognitive technologies. These new technologies affect and shape cognition.