Via Kathy Gill, I found this interview with Derrick de Kerckhove, author of a new short book, Augmented Mind:

Q: Could you define for our readers what 'Augmented Mind' means?

A: The Augmented Mind is the active personal and collective cognitive environment that electronic technologies have weaved in and around us via the Internet in particular and electricity in general. It functions both as an extended memory and a processing intelligence for each one of the users of electronic technologies from the telegraph to “cloud computing” and Twitter. It brings people together instead of separating them as the alphabet did and it allows for any number of individual entries in a fluid information space definable for individual as well as collective and collective needs. It can take many forms whether pooling individual resources in services such as Wikipedia or externalizing and objectifying our imaginary processes in fictional but live environments such as Second Life.

I've got to read it (not immediately, but soon– I talk about augmentation and extended mind ideas in the next chapter I'll be working on), but I confess I'm just as intrigued by the business model of the press, 40kBooks. It's an Italian digital publisher focusing on short titles in fiction, science, and digital culture– somewhat like Longreads, but more targeted and somewhat hipper in its self-presentation. The essays are meant to be read in about an hour, and are in the neighborhood of 7,000 words– i.e., the length of a book chapter (a fact I'm very aware of these days).