Superminds

Is Apple conscious?

Could a cyber-human system sense a potential terrorist attack?

Or make diagnosing a rare and little-known disease routine?

Computers are not replacing us: they are enhancing us. Different intelligences are joining together to do things we thought were impossible.

Whether it's devising innovations to tackle climate change, helping job seekers and employers find one another, or identifying the outbreak of a serious disease, groups of humans and machines are already working together to solve all sorts of problems. And they will do a lot more.

The future will be like another world - a place where we'll think differently. In many ways, we are already there.

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.