Having worked in the areas of networks, databases, multimedia and intelligent systems for many years, I see a new subject emerging. While we know how to define intelligent systems, we do not know whether such systems are cognitive. Often we say, "They are not really intelligent," thereby making a distinction between our ‘biological’ intelligence and that of machines.

This confusion is probably because we don’t quite understand what cognition is.

Cognition is a property of consciousness and not the other way round. We would be able to understand cognition more easily if we understood consciousness first.

We could begin to understand consciousness by mimicking it. The only kind of consciousness we know about is in living systems. And, as far we know, living systems are self-organizing systems.

I propose we define a word called cognitics as follows: "Cognitics is the study and engineering of conscious processes in self-organizing systems".

It is the cognitic components of future systems that may determine competitive edges in technologies of the future.

Dr Sugata Mitra