Cognitive Practice in the Era of the Internet of Things: Ave, Homo Connectus!

This article offers a philosophical investigation of how the Internet of Things (IoT) reconfigures cognitive practice, reshaping the structure of knowledge, decision-making, and subjectivity in the digital environment. It demonstrates that IoT is not merely a technological infrastructure but a mechanism that embeds cognition within algorithmic and service-based systems, reducing epistemic autonomy and deepening dependence on platforms and automated protocols. The study conceptualizes Homo connectus as a new socio-technical form of subjectivity shaped by platform dependency, technical mediation of action, algorithmic production of meaning, and systemic constraints on reflective decision-making. These transformations affect education, knowledge production, and professional competence by introducing structural reliance on service ecosystems and reducing individual cognitive sovereignty. To analyze these dynamics, the article introduces the Autonomy-Enabling Ratio (AER), a novel metric for assessing the extent of cognitive autonomy within connected environments. AER captures the ratio between autonomous and externally regulated scenarios of knowledge, education, and professional practice, providing a tool to identify algorithmic overreach and the erosion of human agency. This work contributes to philosophical discourse by framing IoT as both a technical and epistemic phenomenon, critically examining its implications for human autonomy, meaning-making, and social interaction in the context of pervasive digital infrastructures.