Look around you at all of the web-enabled devices that you own. Many of us now carry smartphones everywhere we go. When we need to do something on a larger screen we might whip out our iPad or a tablet PC. For extensive input we have notebook and desktop computers. And whether we’re listening to music, watching videos, or playing games, many of us now do so on socially connected platforms where we can communicate with our circles of friends at the same time.
Amber Case, a Cyborg Anthropologist and UX Designer at Vertigo Software, says that all of this constant reliance on personal technology is beginning to change the mapping of our brains as a species. We have evolved so much to depend on that technology that we have actually evolved into cyborgs, she claims.
“You are all actually cyborgs, but not the cyborgs that you think,” Case began, at her recent TedX presentation. You’re not Robocop and you’re not terminator, but you’re cyborgs every time you look at a computer screen or use one of your cell phone devices.
Case explains that we’ve entered a technological age in which we’ve crammed a great deal information into tiny devices that we now rely on instead of storing our information in our brains. She calls this “Mary Poppins technology”.
“We can put anything we want into it, and it doesn't get heavier,” she explains. “If you print it out, it looks like a thousand pounds of material that you're carrying around all the time. And if you actually lose that information, it means that you suddenly have this loss in your mind, that you suddenly feel like something's missing, except you aren't able to see it, so it feels like a very strange emotion.”
It is indeed a strange emotion, and is one that anyone who has ever lost a device, or had a failed hard drive, can relate to.
The social media aspect adds another dimension to the picture, with a circle of family and friends that are instantly at our disposal anytime, anywhere.
“When we bring all that into the social space, we end up checking our phones all the time,” Case says. “It's not that we're always connected to everybody, but at any time we can connect to anyone we want. And if you were able to print out everybody in your cell phone, the room would be very crowded.”
Case says that she’s worried about the psychological effects all of this is having on humanity. The art of personal reflection has been lost because of the constant connections provided by these devices, and without that we have a difficult time establishing our personal identities. This effect will be even more pronounced with children who are growing up in this age of personal technology.
“Kids today, they're not going to be dealing with this down time, that they have an instantaneous button-clicking culture, and that everything comes to them, and that they become very excited about it and very addicted to it.”
But Case says that it’s really not all bad. While we’re more reliant on the machines, the connections that we are able to maintain now, that we weren’t even able to do 10 years ago, are actually making us more human, she claims.
“It’s still a human connection; it's just done in a different way. We're just increasing our humanness and our ability to connect with each other, regardless of geography.”
Case makes some excellent points during her presentation that make you stop and think what life would be like without all of this. Of course, those of us who were born prior to 1990 got to experience the world without all of this gadgetry and understand how profoundly it has changed our lives. Whether we’re better or worse off as a species because of it is a matter of debate, but one thing is certain: We’d better make sure that we have the resources to maintain powering all of these devices, or one day we’re going to wake up and have to learn how to live without them all over again. And that’s a prospect that I’m certain not many of us would like to think about.
