Course blog update

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Crossreferences and comments.

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Rewinding: Representations in the brain

• Central nervous system, technological simulation of consciousness (McLuhan 1964.)
• Extending the outside inside = representation
Cortex as the representing tool in the brain (Chapter 2).
Examples of cortical representation:
• Somatotopies
• Tonotopies
How homo became sapiens? (Peter Gärdenfors 2003): Ability to represent without direct perception as a defining characteristic of homo sapiens.
• Homo sapiens = homo representans
• Stages of development of the brain (phylogenesis)
=> Reflect

Rewinding: Digital representation of the world

There is a digital representation (=model) for every imaginable phenomenon:
• alphabets
• numbers (of different formats)
• images
• moving images
• sounds
• spaces
Digital representation allows handling the digital representation instead of the actual matter.
ideas.
Claim: The digital world model is a revolutionary phase in the human evolution, establishing the species of homo representans digitalis.
=>Should our designs support or defy the evolution of homo representans digitalis?
=> Healthy evolution?
=> Natural evolution?

Evolutionism

• Evolutionism, initiated by the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
=> Phylogenesis of homo representans digitalis?

Extended body

Clothing as technology to extend the skin (Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964)
External representation: Tools represent us
Apes use tools as extensions of their hands.
• Chimps' tool kit (Trivedi 2004)
• Tomasello & Call (1997) Primate Cognition See page 72
Built-in technology: Cyborgs (Clynes and Kline 1960)

Cyborg experiments: the extensions of the body in the media age (Zylinska 2002)
Marsh 2003).
Are we already cyborgs?
=> Reflections, comments?

Extended mind

Marshall McLuhan

Books as extensions of mind

• Gutenberg man, the man whose consciousness has been changed by the printed book (McLuhan 1964)

Digital representations as extensions of mind

=> Is your laptop an extension of your mind? Is it part of your consciusness?
=> Install a computer under the skin and connect it with the brain?
=> Counteraguments, comments?

Extended mind

Andy Clark (2009). Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action and cognitive extension
Mind does not reside only inside the brain, but even technological extensions of mind are part of mind.
• Other writings on the Extended mind

Socially extended body

• Housing as collective skin (McLuhan 1964)
=> Counterarguments? Comments?

Socially extended mind

• Social [knowledge] building as creative process of knowing will be collectively extended to the whole of human society (McLuhan 1964)
Holds for today's social and community media. e.g.:
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Social constructivism
• Electronic mass media collapse space and time barriers in human communication, enabling people to interact and live on a global scale (McLuhan; 1962 Gutenberg galaxy)
• "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." (McLuhan 1966)

Supersized mind

Andy Clark (2009). Mind does not reside only inside the brain, but even technological extensions are part of mind!

Dualism and holism

Dualism

• Dualism (definition)
• Dualism (Wikipedia)
Mind and body are fundamentally distinct.
Mind and technology are fundamentally distinct.

Holistic view

• Holism (etymology)
• Holism (wikipedia)
Opposes the view that mind, body and technology are separate but interact.
Holistic view: The body, mind and the technological extensions as one and the same system?
=> What does interaction mean then?