The Extended Mind Relationship With Devices and Technology

The Extended Mind Relationship With Devices and Technology

Have devices and technology become part of our bodies and mind?

It was suggested that devices have become part of an extension outside of our bodies and minds. Clark and Chalmers (1998) denote Active externalism and advocates that the external environment plays a crucial role in driving our thought processes by creating a coupled system. If we remove the external part, behavioural competence will drop. Just like a fragment of the brain being removed. Note the word active, which is particularly significant and differentiates from Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979) of passive externalism. The distal nature of passive externalism does not drive cognition so it is therefore irrelevant.

Apple advertisements cater towards a materialistic, affective and emotional attachment to devices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODmfmUWqlSA. This shows the shift in focus when it comes to the construction of new technology. In addition, human and technology have become ubiquitous as well as the processing of information now differs from the past.

Clark’s notion of the extended mind proposes a mutual relationship with technology and our minds. Mcluhan (2001) in understanding Media had a similar hypothesis to Clark as well, which in essence, complement each other but are both unique yet similar perspectives. Elmore (2014) a term coined nomophobia which is the fear of being without phone contact and produces anxiety. This supports the notion of the extended mind that external environment does affect our cognition. This spreads into Digital Media too with social media sites and the web. Harraway (1991) also likened us to cyborgs with digital technologies that can be associated with our body suggesting our connection with machine and technology too. Robert Logan (2013) in Mcluhan’s extended and the extended mind thesis identifies fourteen messages that support our relations with data, knowledge and information which therefore extend our minds.

However, there are numerous problems that come with this theory and for digital media. The theory stretches the limit of cognition too far implying that entirety of the internet is part of individual cognition (Adams and Aziwa, 2010) but also continues to divide biological part and non-biological part, thus this comes as a relabeling as suggested by William Ramsey (2010). If active externalism is true, then would this medium indicate a potential concern of control and surveillance over our cognition and minds?  Could this change the way we think and change our emotions? Could the accumulation of data through extension and technology eventually replace our whole cognition?

 Bibliography

Adams, F., & Aizawa, K. (2010). Defending the bounds of cognition. The extended mind. pp. 67-80.

Apple - iPhone 5s - TV Ad - Powerful. (2014). [video] Apple.

Burge, T. (1979). Individualism and the Mental. Midwest Stud Philos, 4(1), pp.73-121.

Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. (1998). The Extended Mind. Analysis, 58(1), pp.7-19.

Elmore, T. (2014). Nomophobia: A Rising Trend in Students. [online] Psychologytoday.com. Available at: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/artificial-maturity/201409/nomophobia-rising-trend-in-students [Accessed 19 Oct. 2014].

Haraway, D. (1991).  A Cyborg Manifesto. [online]. Available at: http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/ [Accessed 20 October 2014].

Logan, R. (2013). McLuhan Extended and the Extended Mind Thesis (EMT). Pismo Awangardy Filozoficzno-Naukowej, [online]. Available at: http://www.academia.edu/3776248/McLuhan_Extended_and_the_Extended_Mind_Thesis_EMT  [Accessed 21 October 2014].

McLuhan, M. (2001). Understanding media. London: Routledge.

Putnam, H. (1975). Mind, language, and reality. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press.

Ramsey, W. (2010). The Extended Mind Reviews Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. University of Notre Dame. [online]. Available at: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/24553-the-extended-mind/ [Accessed 20 October 2014].

Star Wars Easter Egg!

Google's New Easter Egg

Google are known for their Easter eggs when you type into the search bar and something happens.

Google have done it again with the upcoming release of the new Star Wars movie. While they were very open about the changes to a Star Wars themes on their applications. This one was quietly released with a cryptic Tweet by Google:

Hint: Search the beginning. #ChooseYourSide https://t.co/W9sjR80Q05

— Google (@google) November 23, 2015

What does this mean? Well if you type and search into Google: ' A long time ago in a galaxy far far away' you will get a really nice surprise! Check it out.


Or if you just want to know, have a look at the screenshot below:

Google search has turned into the the open credits of Star Wars! Now all we need is the majestic music as well! The Star Wars hype is real.

Star Wars - Choose your side!

Choose wisely young padawan

Google has gone full blown Star Wars fanatic by letting you choose which side you would choose. However, that is not all. When you do choose your side. Google related apps will also follow along with the Star Wars Theme (Personally,  I chose the dark side, since I am partial to the colours).

Head over to the website and have a look yourself: http://www.google.co.uk/starwars/ 

Choose your side

The chosen side will correspond with which side you have chosen:

In Gmail, the obvious change (this may not take immediate effect) is the background is now Star Wars related. Similarly when you install the extension for Chrome, your new tabs will now open up as a full screen wallpaper of images from the new movie! This is also the same effect with Chromecast app backdrop.

Star Wars events  (especially the release date of the movie) are automatically added into your Caldendar events. Downloading the Star Wars app on your phone will automatically push a Star Wars theme to your smartwatch.

With YouTube, the volume and progress bar are now glowing lightsabers (colour is dependant on your side). Additionally the volume bar will also produce the sound of the lightsaber when hovered over or adjusting the volume.

Google Maps the street view person is now a storm trooper and the navigation is either a tie fighter or an x-wing. With Waze, the voice navigator is now C3PO. With Google Translate, you can now translate into Aurebesh too!

While nothing is useful, it does provide a reminder and also excitement towards the upcoming new Star Wars the force awakens movie.

Oh and if you have forgotten, the movie comes out on December 17th 2015.

May the Force be with you!

My Random Addictions: Happy Halloween!

Halloween is upon us!

While browsing through the internet, I came across a really interesting website that would aid in selecting a horror movie to watch on the day or any day that you have an itch for horror.

It is a site called 'Reel Scary', which I think the punned was severely intended. Going past the name of the site, the site separates the films into three distinct categories: Disturb, Gore and Suspense. Each film that is listed are rated by these three and depending on the nature and the kind of the horror film, the higher or lower the scores for each category. There is also the highest average of all three categories as well as for the individual categories. 

The site also lists the definitions of each one: 

Disturb: Something that sticks to your head and was highly disturbing

Gore: Lots of blood, flying limbs and organs

Suspense: Those that keep you guessing, waiting and glued to your seat

Reel Scary website

Therefore, these categories will help you choose what kind of horror film you want to watch whether it will be the disturbing kind, the gorey type or a more suspenseful kind of  horror film. 

What is your favourite horror movie? Have a look and see and pick a great Halloween movie!

Happy Halloween!

Source: https://www.reelscary.com/ 

The Map of the internet

Ever wondered what the map of the internet looks like? Now you can!

I found this website and thought it would be useful for people to perceive the internet visually and alternatively. For starters the visualisation used are those of circles. The size of the circle determines the amount of traffic it gets ( basically how popular). Users' form links by switching between websites and the stronger the link, the closer the circles will be which makes the structure of the circles.

Google.co.uk etc, would of course, be one of the biggest. What is more fascinating is that you can see what sites are the most popular within countries. This is particularly interesting as searches and site popularity are different within different countries. For example, Baidu is bigger than Google since Baidu is their go-to search engine or Naver for South Korea.

It makes you think how different people search is and how they optimise for each country or how closes linked sites are with other sites. Can this be changed to increase traffic etc?

Play around with it and see for yourself!


This link and source for this is http://internet-map.net/

DuckDuckGo: an alternative search engine

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is an alternative search engine that does not track what you search. It emphasises heavily that privacy of their users are important so they do not track. This is opposite to search engine such as Google. It also highlights that it gets the best sources rather than the most sources (Which Google search engine does but this is slowly changing). 

Google search engine is all about personalisation and each google search can be different, if two different users search the same thing with personalised ads etc. DuckDuckGo is different where you will not be tracked when left and there are no personalised ads and just ads which fit with your keywords. DuckDuckGo also has the feature of bangs (!) that can directly take you to the website without searching on the page. For example, if I search '!twitter' (not case sensitive) and click on it, this will directly take me to the site. Very nifty.

Personally I have tried it and really do think it is a great alternative to Google search. In fact, it seems a lot of people think the same as there was a 600% increase in traffic when the Snowden revelations occurred about the tracking of the NSA. This search engine has seen its popularity rise and is seriously competing with Google.

It provides everything that is the opposite of Google, but that is not to say it is all a good thing. Are we too used to Google or are we just forced to use it since everyone does? Can DuckDuckGo become the next top search engine? What do you think?

Sources: https://duckduckgo.com/about 

               http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/business/2015/10/talk-talk-hack-how-safe-our-data-                hands-big-companies