N. Katherine Hayles proposes to discuss ideas that will be presented in her upcoming book, You Are More Than You Think: the power of the cognitive nonconscious. She describes current models of consciousness, stressing cognitive processes which create the basis for consciousness but are not available to introspection. After Hayles outlines many inadequacies, inefficiencies and costs of consciousness, she reviews some of the benefits of nonconscious cognition–defining cognition as a process that interprets information in contexts that connect with meaning. She argues that all biological life forms have some cognitive capacity, and that computational media constitute another field of cognitive processes. Hayles speculates that awareness of nonconscious cognition will de-center humans from the humanities. She suggests that awareness of alternative forms of cognition offer a way of making complexity comprehensible.
