Our Mental Prosthetics

As technology has become more and more advanced and increasingly prevalent in our lives, we have reached an interesting point in history. People around the world carry tiny machines with them that allow them to communicate instantly with anyone else. I carry a tiny computer on my keychain, an extra set of memory which works far better than my own. Our computers allow us to have access to dictionaries, encyclopedias, and translators anywhere, and allow us to connect to a global network of information.

All of these computers which have become so ubiquitous in our daily lives have changed how we function drastically. In a sense, they serve as Mental Prosthetics, extending our mental abilities just as simple tools extend the power of our own hands and leaving more time and power to other functions. Our new prosthetics allow us to keep massive amounts of information with us at all times, to design and build faster and more accurately, and even to perform delicate surgeries. They perform simple tasks for us like arithmetic and spelling, leaving us time for other pursuits, and provide us with a constant feed of information, in sound, text, images, and video, to keep us up to date.

I would like to put forth Mental Prosthetics as a different way to think about the interaction between humans and technology. Perhaps a new way of thinking of our machines can help us see their great potential as a tool to aid humans and also to keep us aware of the dangers of dependancy.

Thu, Apr 2, 2009  Permanent link
Categories: technology, computers

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