Your Computer Really Is a Part of You

I think this is pretty interesting, I always thought the items we use a lot, like your cell phone, becomes a part of you. Explains why people pick up their phones before they ring or the phantom vibration syndrome, ok maybe not that last one but read on.

Everyday tools really do become part of ourselves.

The findings come from a deceptively simple study of people using a computer mouse rigged to malfunction. The resulting disruption in attention wasn’t superficial. It seemingly extended to the very roots of cognition.

“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”

Chemero’s experiment, published March 9 in Public Library of Science, was designed to test one of Heidegger’s fundamental concepts: that people don’t notice familiar, functional tools, but instead “see through” them to a task at hand, for precisely the same reasons that one doesn’t think of one’s fingers while tying shoelaces. The tools are us.

When the mouse worked, hand motions followed a mathematical form known as “one over frequency,” or pink noise. It’s a pattern that pops up repeatedly in the natural world, from universal electromagnetic wave fluctuations to tidal flows to DNA sequences. Scientists don’t fully understand pink noise, but there’s evidence that our cognitive processes are naturally attuned to it.

But when the researchers’ mouse malfunctioned, the pink noise vanished. Computer malfunction made test subjects aware of it — what Heidegger called “unreadiness-at-hand” — and the computer was no longer part of their cognition. Only when the mouse started working again did cognition return to normal.

Source

So what do you guys think? Our tools become an extension of ourselves?

Oh I have definitely experienced this. A special lucky pencil. Even though it might look like other pencils, when one writes that many words and draws that many pictures with it, it begins to become a part of that person.

So yes, I understand what you are going at.

I agree with this..my computer is from the 2004 era tech so me and "her" have been through a good number of years
And "she" works perfect for me but if anyone else uses it..it crashes,runs slow, lags on internet or shuts down. So i do agree some locked part of us becomes at one with machines or objects.

Strange times we live in..imagine when the androids are fully mastered and mass produced, they will effectively be part of the family and we may even grieve if they "died"

[edit on 17/05/09 by Raider of Truth]

The way I like to think about it is: you are giving inanimate objects life. Just by touching them, you are giving them the experience of life. You charge them up with your energy, like a favorite fork, pan, etc. When you go through so much with an object like that, you begin to start a bond. It's really cool. Energy transfer.

reply to post by Raider of Truth

.imagine when the androids are fully mastered and mass produced, they will effectively be part of the family and we may even grieve if they "died."

So much for technophobia.

Will Smith would still object though, as he would be the one killing our family members.

So what do you guys think? Our tools become an extension of ourselves?

Absolutely, and I would go even farther to suggest that very human condition we all share is dependent upon and crafted by our tools and our technologies. The human mind is identical to our oldest AMH ancestors over 150 to 200kya. Most people tend to think of "cave men" when referring to prehistoric man, but "Cave Men" were Cro-Magnon from only about 30kya.

So if our biology hasn't changed, then what has? Our understanding of the world, and the tools we use to effect changed based upon that understanding. Many of our tools even predate Homo Sapiens, such as spoken language and fire. I've read a few peer review papers even suggesting that our arboreal ancestors before even Australopithecus were using fire to cook our meals... suggesting that cooked foods were easier to digest and extract nutrients from, helping to fuel the evolution of the brain into a monstrous organ that consumes 1/5th of our bodies daily recommended calorie intake. Cooked meat, and especially vegetable matter, required far less intestinal tract to absorb nutrients - causing us to loose our distended "herbivore bellies". The shape of our jaw also changed substantially as muscular powerful jaws were no longer a selective pressure. Anyone who's had trouble with their wisdom teeth knows full well the impact it had. Socially, cooking and preparing meals changed are possibly the formation of our current most most common social structures and.. laying the groundwork for concepts of monogamy & marriage. The more aggressive and bulkier males were able to trade their protection against scavengers and opportunists while the meal was cooking, in exchange for some of the food themselves.

It's an interesting possibility... although it shouldn't be misconstrued as misogynistic justification. After all, the environments those arrangements were economically useful in don't exist anymore except for perhaps a few examples of hunter/gatherer tribes still in existence.


We didn't just plop into a technologically advanced modern society... it was a gradual process, and the next step in that process relied upon the tools we made to get us there.

We don't just consider our tools to be extensions of our conscious and cognitive function... they are integral to the building of our minds. Even today, a child raised bereft of human interaction, or in the wild, are considered feral and lack the social tools which must be inferred from their environment and nurtured. Their minds are stymied and comparable to the severely mentally handicapped, their language capacity is reduced and in some cases rendered incapable. They display little to no aptitude for social interaction or consideration. They can make progressive strides back into human culture, but only with substantial therapy and counseling. They are feral animals, and they are us. And we are them, just slightly more optimized for a radically different and progressively changing environment built by our tools.

I would recommend exercising extreme caution in reading up on studies of Feral Children due to the embellishments and hoaxes which abound due to the rarity and the profound implications they reveal about ourselves and how we take for granted the humanity, emotion, cognition, and perception that we take for granted as innate... in fact, have to be learned and practiced in order to become what we typically consider to be "human".


So if our tools are a part of us, and have had profound impact on chiseling the human soul out of rougher unshapely stock... why do so many seem to pronounce an aversion to integrating our tools into our biology? They have enhanced and changed us so profoundly, why should we stop now? Why is the line drawn at this arbitrary spot, and not some other, or some other beyond that? We are only here, and only human, because our tools have shaped us from mere homo sapiens, into humans. The terms are often used in the same context, but I don't think they're synonymous. I think humanity doesn't end at the species boundary, and stepping beyond the purely biological frame of homo sapiens so as to directly merge with our tools and technology can be done without loosing that humanity we so cherish.

A slightly edited exert from Juan Enriquez 2009 TED talk on "The Ultimate Reboot". Full Video here. Tech Evolution will eclipse the financial crisis.

And as you bring these trends (Cellular Engineering, Tissue Engineering, Robotics) together, and as you think of what it means to take people who are profoundly deaf, who can now begin to hear -- I mean, remember the evolution of hearing aids, right? I mean, your grandparents had these great big cones, and then your parents had these odd boxes that would squawk at odd times during dinner, and now we have these little buds that nobody sees. And now you have cochlear implants that go into people's heads and allow the deaf to begin to hear. Now, they can't hear as well as you and I can. But, in 10 or 15 machine generations they will, and these are machine generations, not human generations. And about two or three years after they can hear as well as you and I can, they'll be able to hear maybe how bats sing, or how whales talk, or how dogs talk, and other types of tonal scales. They'll be able to focus their hearing, they'll be able to increase the sensitivity, decrease the sensitivity, do a series of things that we can't do.

And the same thing is happening in eyes. This is a group in Germany that's beginning to engineer eyes so that people who are blind can begin to see light and dark. Very primitive. And then they'll be able to see shape. And then they'll be able to see color, and then they'll be able to see in definition, and one day, they'll see as well as you and I can. And a couple of years after that, they'll be able to see in ultraviolet, they'll be able to see in infrared, they'll be able to focus their eyes, they'll be able to come into a microfocus. They'll do stuff you and I can't do. All of these things are coming together, and it's a particularly important thing to understand, as we worry about the flames of the present, to keep an eye on the future.

It (evolution) is a natural state in everything that is alive, including hominids. There have actually been 22 species of hominids that have been around, have evolved, have wandered in different places, have gone extinct. It is common for hominids to evolve. And that's the reason why, as you look at the hominid fossil record, erectus, and heildelbergensis, and floresiensis, and neanderthals, and Homo sapiens, all overlap. The common state of affairs is to have overlapping versions of hominids, not one.

I think what we're going to see is we're going to see a different species of hominid. I think we're going to move from a Homo sapiens into a Homo evolutis. And I think this isn't 1,000 years out. I think most of us are going to glance at it, and our grandchildren are going to begin to live it. And a Homo evolutis brings together these three trends into a hominid that takes direct and deliberate control over the evolution of his species, her species and other species. And that, of course, would be the ultimate reboot.

I feel a lot more complete if there is a computer around, but more than that, Internet access. I want a google toolbar in my head, but heck then it would probably collect all the bad things going through my head that I think about sometimes and use the info against me.

I never felt this way about a dictionary.

Originally posted by hadriana
I feel a lot more complete if there is a computer around, but more than that, Internet access. I want a google toolbar in my head, but heck then it would probably collect all the bad things going through my head that I think about sometimes and use the info against me.

I never felt this way about a dictionary.

Ever increasing interconnectedness is what mckenna was talking about as we reach his singularity point in the timewave.

Just think about it, in our society you rarely meet anyone who does not carry a phone with him when leaving home. Nowadays phones are becoming real computers, extending our capabilities of communication not only to remote voice communication but even remote viewing and having the collective total contribution of the internet at our fingertips anywhere, anytime.

reply to post by hadriana


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/81300a70af07.jpg[/atsimg]

Oh yer since I got my first computer in the 1980's a Commodore 64 I was hooked, Then I brought an Amiga and deluxe paint " I adored that machine!" I was a computer artist and still am.

But then came cheap PC's and unlimited memory not too mention cheap appz and the internet. So many people that I have meet on the internet have become real friends. Then I found ATS and the fun stopped!

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 13-3-2010 by MOTT the HOOPLE]

I'm admin at small company for 10 years. It is common experience for me that some device work well until it moves out of the door. Also one of my coworkers have bad influence on computers. He is technically "dumb" (was able to put 4 DIMMs into socket in wrong direction - something I could not imagine before), but it is something different. Server running months crash if he go around! He is better now - thanks God.
Every craftsman love his tools and wouldn't work with others. Same with computers as they are tools. BTW Heidegger is one of my favorite philosophers - in fact all phenomenological movement is fascinating.