Are we cyborgs yet? The cyborg, or cybernetic organism — part human, part machine — is a staple of science fiction, from Star Trek to The Six Million Dollar Man to RoboCop to the Terminator. These pop culture cyborgs usually involve robotic machinery to enhance physical capabilities rather than mental ones because that’s more visual, more entertaining and easier for the general public to understand.
Are we cyborgs yet?
The cyborg, or cybernetic organism — part human, part machine — is a staple of science fiction, from Star Trek to The Six Million Dollar Man to RoboCop to the Terminator. These pop culture cyborgs usually involve robotic machinery to enhance physical capabilities rather than mental ones because that’s more visual, more entertaining and easier for the general public to understand.
Video: Year in Review: Robots Everywhere!
Slideshow: The Top 10 real-life Star Trek inventions
And, of course, such physically enhanced cyborgs exist in real life. Oscar Pistorius, a runner with two artificial legs, was disqualified from competing in last year’s Olympics because his man-made limbs gave him an unfair advantage.
Current research in prosthetic limbs is aiming for artificial arms, hands and legs that are directly controlled by the wearer’s thoughts.
But the term cyborg, coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline, originally envisioned either the human mind enhanced by machines, or the use of human minds to control or direct machines.
Aren’t Internet-connected cell phones technically machines that are enhancing our minds?
Prosthetic memory
I wrote a blog item Wednesday about the announcement by a company called reQall Inc. of its new self-described “memory aid” service. In that post, I wrote that “reQall is a life-changing, potentially culture-shifting, almost science fiction-like service.” I’m going to tell you what I meant by that, but first let me tell you about my own experience with reQall.
What is reQall, exactly? Well, it’s a service with both free and paid versions (both very powerful) that makes sure you don’t forget things. You interface with reQall on the Web, via cell phone, e-mail or Short Messaging Service. You choose.
The original “killer feature” of reQall was voice recognition. With any cell phone, you speed-dial the reQall number, say anything, and reQall transcribes your words into text and places the text on a list. You can use it for to-do lists, shopping lists — any list. If you have an iPhone or a BlackBerry, platform-specific applications make all these even more powerful. The list is always there, autosorted by type, date and other criteria. Plus, reQall would occasionally remind you of things on your phone or by e-mail (again, your choice).
The new version has yet another “killer feature,” which truly brings reQall into the realm of science fiction. It’s called Memory Jogger, and it’s baked into reQall, always working quietly behind the scenes. The Memory Jogger technology looks at a wide range of criteria, such as the time of day, what’s on your calendar or your physical location (it uses your phone’s GPS) to figure out what to remind you of, and when. The reQall Memory Jogger is so eerily intelligent that it feels almost like a human assistant is looking out for you.
As you’re about to drive by the cleaners, your phone beeps and shows the message, “Pick up your suit!” As you’re about to leave your office for a business lunch, your phone tells you, “You met Jonathan Smith at CTIA 2006, he’s a vegetarian, went to UCLA, obsessed with golf, has twin daughters and likes to be called ‘Jonathan,’ not ‘Jon.'” ReQall seems to know what to remind you of and when.
After using the original reQall for months and the new version for days, I can tell you that it has changed how I think. I have essentially outsourced the management of trivial information to reQall, and I feel that I’ve picked up some additional brain capacity for more important things — like thinking about writing brilliant columns.
Nowadays, the only things I forget to do are the items that, for one reason or another, I don’t enter into reQall. (My wife isn’t taking any chances and now adds things to my “to-do list” by adding them directly to reQall from her reQall account, bypassing me altogether. Do yourself a favor and don’t tell your spouse about this capability.)
The reQall service is only the latest and probably the most sophisticated cell phone-based service to change how our brains manage information.
Prosthetic knowledge
Another major brain-changing mobile “application” is the Internet itself. Since the invention of the printing press right up until the ubiquity of the mobile Internet, we all employed a now-objectionable way to deal with unanswered questions — those small questions that come up every day. You see an actress in a movie and are certain you’ve seen her in another movie, but which one? Why are people in the Netherlands called the Dutch? Where does bleach come from?
In the past, we all dealt with such questions in one of two ways: shrug and accept our ignorance, or make a mental note to find out later.
Now those days are gone. Our Internet-connected cell phones serve, essentially, as prosthetic knowledge. A quick Google search, and we know the answer. The answers to such questions are always on our persons — the need to memorize such things is gone.
As the Internet gets faster and cell phones get better interfaces and more amazing applications, our mental habits will change, and mental capabilities will grow, augmented by prosthetic memory, knowledge and, eventually, even wisdom.
Cell phone-based prosthetic memory and prosthetic knowledge are major enhancers of the human mind. But cell phones can and do change our brains in other, smaller ways.
Instead of counting sheep, we can just play an audio file on our cell phones to put ourselves to sleep.
Instead of having to choose between reading the newspaper or mowing the lawn, our cell phones can read the newspaper to us as we do yard work.
The necessity to endure boredom has been weakened as well, along with our tolerance for it. Standing in line? Shopping with your spouse? Nothing to do? Your phone’s YouTube app, Twitter access, e-mail feature and podcasting capability provide instant amusement, diversion, productivity or intellectual stimulation. Our sole remaining challenge is choosing among them.
All these small capabilities add up to big changes in what our brains do all day, and how we think about the world.
There’s no question that cell phones are changing how our minds work, how we retain, manage and retrieve facts and information, and even how we think about the world.
So are we cyborgs yet? I believe the shocking but inescapable answer to that question is: Yes!
Mike Elganwrites about technology and global tech culture. He blogs about the technology needs, desires and successes of mobile warriors in his Computerworld blog, The World Is My Office. Contact him atmike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, “The Raw Feed.”
