The Extended Mind - Human Brains versus Zombies Computerland

Once upon a time, there was a young, cheerful girl. One night, she followed her parents to Manly Beach for a brisk walk. After half an hour or so, they all went back to the curb side to get some ice cream. As they reached the curb with street lights, they tried o sweep off all the sand from their feet, and put on their shoes. However, what the little girl found under her bare foot was beyond her imagination. It was a dead, splashed corpse of a cockroach attached to her foot. Her experience at such a young age has traumatised her forever.  Whenever she goes to the beach, she sees the moving pictures playing in her head vividly, as if it just happened yesterday. She can feel the same fear, the shear shock the exact way she felt during the time of the incident. Since the unfortunate event, she has never walked bare feet in any occasion - not even at her home. 

Yes, that girl was me. 

Thanks to that experience, I now have a condition diagnosed as 'phobia'. Simply looking at the word makes me sick, not to mention looking at its picture or seeing it in real life. We don't need to go in depth of my fears, but for the sake of this article, let's call this creature "C". What's interesting in my suffering, is the embodiment of my fears and shock from years ago when I was much younger. When I go to the beaches, I can clearly remember my emotions and reaction from the distant past when that incident took place. As much as I regret this has happened to my childhood, it is surprising how much trivial events and for how long our minds can remember. This experience has moved from habitual to the conscious, with shifting forms of attention, memory and sensations which enabled me to apply such panicking feelings to other similar situations, for instance, walking along a dark street alone at night and being constantly aware and afraid of giant 'C's attacking me out of nowhere. 

This material memory is a spirit with its life of its own, circulating outside the boundaries of my skin and skull (Clark and Chalmers 1998, p, 8). In the paper of Clark and Chalmers, the idea of the 'extended mind' is explained. It is the division point between the mind and the environment by promoting the view of active externalism (similar to semantic or "content" externalism) (1998, p, 11). Through this concept, it can be said that there is a separation between the mind, the body and the environment. Applying this to my experience, 'C's, as objects in the external environment, are utilised by my mind in a way that they can be seen as extensions of my mind (Noë 2006). My mind is designed to encompass every level of the 'cognitive process', which often includes the use of external environmental aids, such as the similar settings - a dark night, an isolation street- which engage me into the scenario of my childhood trauma. Because external objects play such a significant role in aiding cognitive processes, the mind and the environment act as a "coupled system", where the external objects must function with the same purpose as the internal processes (Chalmers 2009).

'Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do,' Alva Noë wrote (2006). In fact, none of my feelings towards 'C's are by choice. Rather, they are involuntary emotions attached due to the random events happened in my life. Instead of remembering the pictures, sensation and emotions of that night within the boundaries of my brain for recollection, I have been actively participating in an extended mine, where there is an archive of the incident through a recording. Just as Chalmers said,  “a lot of things that used to happen in our mind are now being offloaded into the world” (2009). Ultimately, I have been using the technology of an extended mind as a technical support for my haunted memory.

How do these 'cognitive technics' affect our interactions and communications with the world? One idea explored in the lecture is meta-communication, a way of communication that surrounds nominal verbal communication and carries additional meaning from non-verbal communication cues such as kinesics and paralinguistic elements (Segal, Smith, Boose and Jaffe 2013).  Meta-communication plays a crucial role in conveying and decoding the messages beyond the spoken words, sending second level messages about the meaning of first level messages. Cues like facial expressions, change of tone of voice, accompanying gestures, secondary signals sent to bystanders. They are the unspoken words that help us develop our perceptions, sensation and emotions in a conversation. According to Gregory Bateson (2000, p. 23), meta-communication may match, contradict or support the verbal communication. But how much of these silent communication is ignored, due to our technological advances? Technology has become such an integral part of our lives that sometimes, we might accidentally apply the rules in the reign of the online world into reality. Ever heard those irritating kids saying 'O.M.G.' instead of 'oh my god' in real life? How many of the non-verbal cues are ignored in transmitting our messages through the Internet? Our understanding of each other and the quality of communication have declined with the rise of 'cognitive technologies'.

Another example of these 'cognitive technologies' include is our smartphone. Instead of remembering what events to attend and their times and venues, we now put them down in eCalendars and get reminders beforehand. The outsourcing of memory into technology has brought about a concern of ' los[ing] an ever-greater part of our knowledge' which may make humans obsolete (Steiger n.d.).  Even though it is reasonable to have such skeptical concerns, there is actually a great chance of a new learning experience through these 'cognitive supports' outside of the boundaries of our minds. As Noë argued, our perception and perceptual consciousness are dependent on the capacities for action and thought (2006). To perceive, according to his enactive approach to perception, it is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand (Noë 2006). Although sometimes we have to switch off part of our brain to focus on another part, we can learn and explore more efficiently (Kay 2008), and have a better understanding of our sensations and about our past, present and future.

Word: Metacommunication


References:

Bateson, G. 2000, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology,  University Of Chicago Press, USA.

Chalmers, D. 2009, ‘The Extended Mind Revisited [1/5], at Hong Kong, accessed 30 March 2013, Youtube, Hong Kong, < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S149IVHhmc >.

Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. J. 1998, 'The extended mind', Analysis,  Vol. 58, Issue 1, p. 7-19, accessed 30 March 2013, Wiley Online Library, <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8284.00096/abstract>.

Kay, A. 2008, 'Alan Kay on Learning', accessed 30 March 2013, Youtube, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50L44hEtVos>.

Noë, A. 2006, Action in Perception (Representation and Mind series), MIT Press, Cambridge.

Segal, J. Smith, M. Boose, G. and Jaffe, J. 2013, 'Nonverbal Communication', accessed 30 March 2013, Help Guide Org <http://www.helpguide.org/mental/eq6_nonverbal_communication.htm>.

Stiegler, B. n.d., ‘Anamnesis and Hypomnesis: Plato as the first thinker of the proletarianisation’, accessed 30 March 2013, Ars Industrialis Organisation, < http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis >.

iPad: The future of printing industry?

by Jodee Fong

With the overwhelming amount of online media these days, I can’t help but wonder, how does it benefit or destroy the ordinary publishing industry we’ve always had? Today, I’m going to take iPad as an example to discuss on the dramatic impacts.

With the rising popularity of Apple’s iPads, there are more and more media arising that is compatible with such platform. It has even become a must-have study tool for many grade schools and high schools in Sydney. Many people say it has replaced the conventional textbooks, is it true though?

In the long history of publishing, humans have relied on the method/ technology of jotting down the ideas and process them with machines into papers or hand written on blackboards or other medium. However, facilitated by iPad, more and more publishers follow the trend of e-publications, that is, publishing online instead of actual printing. for example, instead of printing massive piles of exercises, teachers are now giving out the mathematical equations on students’ prescribed exercise application on their iPads. This is not a voluntary thing like it used to be when I was in high school anymore, it is a rather compulsory task. Each student has to pay for their own iPad with specific applications installed by the schools (at least it’s what they do in private schools). Student jot notes on their iPad, read texts and revise on their iPad, even produce their essays on it. The ordinary readers  in the past have in fact become e-readers and e-writers.

This is not only happening in the education world, it is also the similar case in the commerce and business world. With the technology of iCloud – a program of Apple which enables 3G transmitting of data across time and space, officers tend to read documents and produce the respective PowerPoints or minutes for a meeting on their iPads. One minor adjustment done on their iPad, the next minute, it will be updated on their Mac laptop by iCloud. The same goes for newspaper, magazines and other publications.

So how has this transformation impacted on the publishing industry? Is it good or bad? Well, it’s a bit of the both. Undoubtedly, with the abundance of online publishing, like news status or articles shared on Facebook, news update on ABC.com, copies of Harry Potter on Kindle; there is a smaller demand for print media. But there is one thing that we cannot neglect: the need for print media will always be there. When we go to work in the morning, we would still want to quickly grab a copy of MX just to have a good laugh. When we are in  uni, we would still want to take a copy of Blitz instead of actually going online and check out what’s new. Personally, I’d much rather buying books than reading e-books. 1. It hurts my eyes if I stare at the screen for too long, 2. I love the feeling an actual book gives me (the smell of fresh paper, the flickering of each page, the drawings and foldings that I can do to personalised my book), 3. If I were to spend half the price to get an e-book I might as well spend the full price or either pirate it or not read at all. I would also prefer to buy glossy magazines that sometimes come with little gifts because it is simply irreplaceable by e-magazines.

Even though the media landscape has largely been prioritised to the online platform, there is always this share kept for print media. It is not necessary a bad development for the conventional media, not to mention most media has already started their online empire….

Media Ecology - Changing Changes

Week 3's blog

Here's my morning routine: Alarm on my iPhone rings, I snooze. It rings again, I wake up. I put on my glasses, and laying on the bed, I check my iPhone for notifications, then read the news for about 30 minutes. No matter how busting I am every morning, there's just something about my phone that keeps my hands and legs nailed to my bed until I've had enough of news feeds every morning. The media has never been so interactive, responsive and addictive. The machinic assemblage and convergence of previously distinct media platforms into a whole new media form has led us to an unprecedented stage of evolution, where our 'machinic ecology’ - the combination of technology, techniques and technical systems - has been transformed.

Have you ever taken a look into our lives, and wondered how much of the part of our lives are being intruded by these instantaneous technologies? It is true that with the instant news updates and online communications, we have enjoyed easy and immediate access to the world. However, at the same time, how much of our user data and our personal details are given away in the World Wide Web? Think about the social chatting application Whatsapp. Not only does it give away our user data, it also allows our private conversations to be read and intercepted by anyone on the same WiFi network due to an insufficient encryption system. What about our beloved search engine giant Google? Google Now is a new technology supported by recent Android phones, which allows Google to give people information or advertisement they might need, without them even asking for it. Google knows where you are and where you are going through your phone, about your appointments through GMail and the calendar, your interests through your searches and much more. Using all of this information, "Google Now" can alert users to leave earlier for their appointment if there is traffic on the users' usual route. Is that convenient? Absolutely. But for me it is more of scary than convenient! These technologies are the media of the epoch that define the essence of our society and have vastly altered our media ecology. The term 'media ecology', as Neil Postman (1980) describes it, it is about how media technologies create our actions, gives people roles to carry out, and makes us play this role. In simplistic terms, media ecology delves into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival (Media Ecology Association 2009).

In this day and age, we all crave for the latest updates of the news. For instance, people prefer to consume stimulating images of natural disasters taken by citizen journalists with first-hand experience, instead of the pictures taken by the news crew which arrived the area two hours later the incident. There is a blur between the division of consumer and producer when all citizens can produce, share and comment in a click away. We all have become 'part time journalists', as Milissa Deitz (2010) once said, there is an 'intertwined and complex relationships between the journalists, accidental journalists, non-journalists, celebrities, bloggers and the general public'. An example is a video below (included in the news report clip), where a racist attack against two Asian tourists on a Sydney bus was recorded and uploaded by one of the passengers immediately after the incident (Ten News Sydney, 2013). It is this kind of immediacy and spontaneity in information that occupies our mediated communications. 

'Technology has advanced to a point where it no longer needs us to make things happen, and I can safely assert that the roles have flipped: – we are now the ones who need this technology in order to operate and to function properly' (Postman 1980).

Indeed, such shift in the contemporary media ecology has serious implications. Instead of the effect of 'centralising and hierarchical media which privileges economic and social elites’s perspective on public discourse' in the television era, we now have an illusion of autonomy in producing and spreading information that exposes wrongdoings and secrets of the government (think whistleblower WikiLeaks) (Taffel 2008). It is undeniable that these technologies have create huge convenience in every aspect of our lives, but at the same time, we allow them to intrude into our private lives, closer and closer, inch by inch. Other concerns of these technologies's impacts include the increase of mental health disorders and stress related disorder, just to name a few (Taffel 2008). 

Within the ‘media ecology’, there are information and technology which connect, disconnect and reconnect. The media can be seen as an environment and composed of living organisms and interconnected networks existing at the scales of mind, society and the environment which form an ecosystem, according to Gregory Bateson (2000). Even though there might be some scathing consequences of the new technologies, we can always find 'the same nagging paradox' (Taffel 2008), in which the continuous development of technologies can potentially resolve some dominant ecological issues, yet with an inability to constitute subjective formations to take hold of the specific resources to make them work.

A good way to put this is, “changing changes” (Massumi 2002). Let's all just wait and see what will happen next in our beautiful word of media after Google Glasses, Facebook and Whatsapp. 

References:


Bateson, G. 2000, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 2nd ed, University Of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Deitz, M. 2010, 'The New Media Ecology’, On Line Opinion: Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate,  accessed 28 March 2013, <http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11410&page=1 >.

Massumi, B. 2002, A Shock to Thought: Expression After Deleuze and Guattari (eds),  Routledge, London/New York.

Media Ecology Association 2009, 'What is Media Ecology?', Media Ecology Association, Washington, accessed 28 March 2013, <http://www.media-ecology.org/media_ecology/>.


Postman, N. 1980, 'The Reformed English Curriculum' in Eurich, A. C. (eds), High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education, Pitman Pub. Corp, New York.

Taffel, S. 2008, 'The Three Ecologies – Felix Guattari', Media Ecology and Digital Activism, weblog accessed  28 March 2013, <http://mediaecologies.wordpress.com/2008/10/07/the-three-ecologies-felix-guattari/>.

Ten News Sydney 2013, 'Racist attack on Sydney Bus - 2/4/2013', Sydney, online video, accessed 28 March 2013,  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=134SMR8DIlo>.



Blog word: Machinic (given in lecture 2, in preparation for the second tutorial in week 3)