I particularly liked your references to Freud (though personally, he’s not too popular with me in certain view points) and how he states that we wear our “God-hood” awkwardly when it comes to our technologies. I think this was true in his time, but it’s becoming less and less the case every day.

The tech which is developed on all fronts by human beings daily becomes more and more important and intertwined in all of our lives every second we exist around it.

That commercial was just the tip of the iceberg as far as Verizon’s thoughts on this very subject, because the commercial was stating something they reiterate on their site, and ties in with the idea that “a better person is one that is melded with cybernetics”. The statement they make in regards to the Droidx is a very blunt: “It’s not just a better phone. It’s a better you.”

I’m not sure that I like where that thought process is going, but I do completely get that the makers of the Droid phones see the line we are crossing when we enable a device to allow us to connect so intimately, not just with each other, but with our technology (www, social networking, business connections/conversations, online and offline media such as music, movies, gaming). Our tech is becoming part of us. Whether this makes us “better” or not is debatable, but one thing is for certain…

There are people that believe that a better phone equates to a better you. That better tech equates to better people. And there’s one more element that believes this to be true:

Droid Does. :-}

Sorry, had to throw that in. Great article. Loved the commercial and echo the sentiments of the giddy when I saw it. Had to reqatch that transformation a few times. Gotta wonder though. Wouldn’t that hurt? LOL

Jamie

P.S. I’m subscribing now, I like the way you put your ideas out.

In cognitive science the mind is often talked of as extended beyond the brain. The brain functions like a command central that fetches information from the memory and brings it to awareness. Similarly, a library and even the internet is accessible to this brain function and the only difference is that you’re getting the information from outside the brain instead of from the memory. The library, if you have index knowledge of it, is a part of your mind.

What I find interested is how we will modify our bodies in the future. There’s no theoretical problem in changing the DNA to produce a 500 ft tall metal human. At the same time there’s no theoretical problem in building a 500 ft tall metal exo-skeleton with a driving seat fit for a human connected directly to the brain (Brain-Machine Interface). And similarly there’s no theoretical problem in building a 500 ft tall metal robot with a learning artificial neural net as complex over even more complex than a human brain.

The philosophical problem for those who believe in a soul and other metaphysical phenomena would be to explain why these three beings are all self-conscious. A materialist would not face this problem. A deconstructivist would say the metaphors of soul and self-consciousness are misleading. A Buddhist would say that the material reality is a delusion. But a dualist and a transcendentalist would have to say that the robot was programmed to say it was self-conscious and that in reality what the robot is saying are just words. I’d say, in reality, that’s exactly what humans are already doing. Language is confusing our understanding of existence.

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