GUEST POST BY TEBO COCHRANE
Just came across The Edge - basically an online community of leading thinkers in various fields flinging some pretty interesting ideas around some pretty interesting questions.
One entry on the question: "How is the internet changing the way you think?" sparked an idea within me.
Ok, so one thinks, how can this be, species are not distinguishable from one generation to the next, and this is correct - purely biologically speaking we are very possibly just as Homo Sapien as our forefathers 10 thousand years ago.
BUT (and this is a big but), what if I we discard the biological constraint - because I think one can safely assume that in the next few decades, such things as the internet and cell/smart phones will be a wholly global phenomena, which will have very nearly seeped into every crevice in every culture and integrated itself into virtually every individual's existence.
There is no doubt that whether for better or worse, technology and most fundamentally, the computer revolution, has radically altered, not the shape of our brains, but the 'shape' of our cognitive process, the way in which we think.
There is a discussion by a certain Douglas S. Robertson, where he identifies "five broad categories of civilization that differ principally by the method they use to store and handle information."
According to Robertson these are divided into:
The available information now includes the individual's own mind's content plus that of the rest of their village, clan, or tribe, let's say approximately 50 to 1,000 times (h).
Just came across The Edge - basically an online community of leading thinkers in various fields flinging some pretty interesting ideas around some pretty interesting questions.
One entry on the question: "How is the internet changing the way you think?" sparked an idea within me.
There is a long tradition of dealing with categorizing the steps in the human evolutionary process - via relative brain size as an indicating factor. This is, to an extent the basis by which we define distinctions between Homo Erectus and present day Homo Sapien. Ironically there is an argument that the actual lack of any really substantial fossil evidence is key to keeping the debates around the distinctions of species alive, because, for example:
With a purely unbroken chronological fossil record, major evolutionary shifts would practically be unidentifiable within localized time frames. Species are not distinguishable from one generation to the next.
Now I wish to argue that in these upcoming decades it might be wise to re-categorise the next generation away from the Homo Sapien that we've had till now and onward to, let us take upon a bit of poetic license here, and say something like: Homo Globalis.
Now I wish to argue that in these upcoming decades it might be wise to re-categorise the next generation away from the Homo Sapien that we've had till now and onward to, let us take upon a bit of poetic license here, and say something like: Homo Globalis.
Ok, so one thinks, how can this be, species are not distinguishable from one generation to the next, and this is correct - purely biologically speaking we are very possibly just as Homo Sapien as our forefathers 10 thousand years ago.
BUT (and this is a big but), what if I we discard the biological constraint - because I think one can safely assume that in the next few decades, such things as the internet and cell/smart phones will be a wholly global phenomena, which will have very nearly seeped into every crevice in every culture and integrated itself into virtually every individual's existence.
There is no doubt that whether for better or worse, technology and most fundamentally, the computer revolution, has radically altered, not the shape of our brains, but the 'shape' of our cognitive process, the way in which we think.
There is a discussion by a certain Douglas S. Robertson, where he identifies "five broad categories of civilization that differ principally by the method they use to store and handle information."
According to Robertson these are divided into:
Level 0 -- Pre-Language
Level 1 -- Language
Level 2 -- Writing
Level 3 -- Printing
Level 4 -- Computers
Let me briefly sum it up by saying: the amount of information one mind can roughly take in (h) is in this case measured at about 20-25 million bits (the equivalent of memorizing the Iliad 4 to 5 times over). The details are somewhat insignificant.
Therefore level 0 Society (a society without language) is described as a person essentially being locked up in his or her own mind.
Level 1 -- Society
Level 2 -- Society with Writing
One Iliad contains 5 million bits of info. The Iliad and the Odyssey were divided into 24 scrolls. The greatest library in antiquity, the Library of Alexandria, is estimated to have at its zenith contained 532,800 scrolls, then the information contained therein amounts to about 100 billion bits.
Level 3 -- Printing
There are now hundreds of libraries, many of which are larger by many orders of magnitude than the one in Alexandria. No individual can any longer even hope to comprehend all math, libraries, pamphlets, posters, shelf life... you get the point. We now have [10.sup.17] 1 million times more bits of information than in a Level 2 society.
There are now hundreds of libraries, many of which are larger by many orders of magnitude than the one in Alexandria. No individual can any longer even hope to comprehend all math, libraries, pamphlets, posters, shelf life... you get the point. We now have [10.sup.17] 1 million times more bits of information than in a Level 2 society.
And finally: Level 4 -- Computers
No doubt also a revolution in the availability of information but even so, there is still a profound difference between this revolution and those before, as Robertson states: "Mere increases in the total store of information will become relatively unimportant, because even a Level 3 civilization can generate information at a rate that far exceeds anyone's ability to make use of it. Electronic computers, however, are capable of creating a totally new dimension in an information explosion. Computers can multiply our ability to find, analyze, and make use of vast quantities of extant information, thereby circumventing the information limits"
So you see, the computer is not only a harvester, it is a processor, and as a tool it thus facilitates faster processing,analysis, categorization etc. within our own brains. Equally, some studies show, that it debilitates other functions such as for example memory retainment. Why is this? There seems to be a sort of neuro-selection going on here.
The Digital Brain
This techno-biological dialect (poetic license) as I call it, is in every sense of the phrase exactly that:
As humans today we have in my view, both a Neurological Brain and a synthetic, Digital Brain at our disposal. This trend is only on the rise, as more and more people begin to lug around smart phones, with high-speed internet access, you no longer need to remember endless facts (Google does that), because we've evolved in to a sort of Hive Brain Conglomerate, where each individual will soon possess rather than an extended frontal lobe, an, in this case, external (accessory/supplementary/
Ultimately, our skulls and brains may be no larger than before, but as we gradually keep feeding more of its original tasks into external and permanently accessible machines, does this not create, more space and more focus for more strictly neurological, lateral processes such as synthesis, and creativity, at no increased cost, and thus essentially points to a brain that is not large in its direct locality but globally so.
Our two halves are connected through synapses, and we have created one more - the computer, to connect us ultimately and inextricably with each other.
The Homo Globalis integratis Digitalus.
Yes, this whole post was in fact written so I could eventually use those words. If you say it quickly enough it sounds like it's rhyming.
:)
