Are iPhones and Blackberries becoming extensions of our thinking selves?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/out-of-our-brains/?hp

by liuhenry • 16 years ago

10 5 16 years ago

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

i386• 16 years ago

Interesting - Charles Stross covered the "machines as an extension of your mind" idea in Accelerando.

danilocampos• 16 years ago

Thought of the same thing. I read Accelerando after the iPhone had been part of my daily life for about three years.

It's absolutely an early flavor of the book's idea of a "metacortex." You never need to say "I wonder..." when something is in doubt. You just look it up. If you're bored, you can keep your brain awash in new data. If you need to communicate with others through virtually any digital medium, it's a tap or two away.

elblanco• 16 years ago

No, but my Android phone is.

In all seriousness, having migrated from a BB to a more modern phone architecture (iPhone or Android, take your pick), I feel like it is much more an extension of self than my BB ever was. Even if I have no particular need to use it, I can feel my heart palpitating if my battery starts to get low.

I've been wondering about this recently...why does my current phone feel so much more part of "me" than my BB ever did? I think it's because I feel like my computer is a part of me and my Android phone feels like a powerful enough device (and is customizable enough) that I can make it reflect what I want to do. I could never quite get there with my BB, and the performance was never quite up to snuff enough to use it for quick internet activities.

Qz• 16 years ago

My pet theory is that the mind has never been in the brain, in the same way that computers are only as useful as the software they run, software which originates outside the computer. Language itself is the home of sentience, and people are just processors. Minds are an illusion.

gte910h• 16 years ago

Taking a class from this guy:http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/official/thad.starner/wh... at Georgia Tech a decade ago made it sound like it was quite definitely part of him by that part. (Look at the picture to see what "it" is).

Pretty interesting professor, although he'd occasionally just stop mid-sentence to do something on his eyepiece. We joked he was garbage collecting...

Are iPhones and Blackberries becoming extensions of our thinking selves?

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