Augmented reality: A catalyst for the coming cognitive revolution

In the last 20 years, business executives have used these all-too-familiar terms to describe their world. The near-constant interruptions from ringing telephones, buzzing pagers, the web, and an unceasing stream of email messages were thought to be overwhelming people with information, forcing them to switch attention from one task to the next, again and again. People were becoming multitaskers who couldn't concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time. Today, the impact of the information barrage has been termed cognitive overload--the information itself doesn't cause problems, but having to think about it does.1,2 In almost all situations, the amount of information that comes at people exceeds their cognitive capacity to handle it, and their performance could be adversely affected if they miss important details or have difficulty understanding the information.