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Our Cyborg selves

By Terry Dartnall - posted Wednesday, 18 October 2006


The term “cyborg” was coined by Manfred Clynes and Nathan Kline in a 1960’s paper called Cyborgs and Space - Kline said it sounded like a town in Denmark. Their idea was to engineer people for space by implanting electrical devices that would regulate wakefulness, metabolism, respiration, heartbeat and other physiological functions. Onboard devices would bypass lung-based breathing, alter heart rate and temperature, reduce metabolism and food intake, and control wakefulness.

Little work has been done on modifying our bodies in this way, but recent research in cognitive science suggests that we are cyborgs anyway, not in the sense that we have modified our bodies, but in the deeper and more penetrating sense that we have modified our minds by extending and amplifying them with external technologies. We are so enmeshed with these technologies that removing them would be akin to brain damage. We are cyborgs now - and we always have been.

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark, who has pioneered much of this research, points out that our cyborg status solves various puzzles. One is the way in which, despite our genetic similarity to other species, there is something that makes us different and sets us apart. This is the cyborg modification of our minds with external, cognitive technologies.

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The first cognitive technology was probably language, which enabled us to freeze our thoughts into stable objects that we could reflect upon and change. We were then drawn upwards in a virtuous circle as one cognitive technology led to another, upgrading our mindware from speech to writing, through increasingly flexible forms of printing. Until today, when we are engaging in an intimate relationship with machines. And the process is speeding up.

Bioborgs

Even without our cognitive technologies we are what I call “bioborgs”, with modular brains and onboard robot-like devices that we launch to do our bidding. When you go to the fridge for a beer you don’t consciously move your left leg and then your right leg and then your left leg. You delegate responsibility to an onboard walking mechanism - I call it a “biobot”. When you get to the fridge you launch a “get that bottle” routine, rather like launching a little onboard robot. You effectively say, “Get that bottle for me” - and the device gets it for you.

We don’t “drive our bodies,” controlling each and every action. We have dedicated mechanisms that do the job for us, and this frees up our minds for higher things. Think how your fingers co-ordinate when you tie your shoe-laces or sign a cheque. Imagine what it would be like to individually instruct each of your fingers to do these things!

Our bioborg nature is beautifully illustrated by the Titchener/Aglioti disks. There is a well-known visual illusion called the Titchener Circles Illusion (click here and here). We have a circle surrounded by an annulus of small circles, and another circle of the same size surrounded by an annulus of big circles. The circle surrounded by the small circles looks bigger than the circle surrounded by big ones, even though the inner circles are the same size.

Aglioti replaced the inner circles with plastic disks we can pick up. Now here’s the puzzler. The disk surrounded by the small circles looks bigger than it really is, but when you go to pick it up, your thumb and forefinger form exactly the right aperture to do so. The conscious you is fooled but the part of your brain that’s driving the “pick up the disk” routine isn’t fooled.

The explanation is probably that we have two incoming visual pathways: the dorsal and the ventral. The dorsal pathway is part of an ancient system (the dorsal system) that is responsible for the fine details of motor control. The information coming in through this pathway isn’t routed through consciousness and the dorsal system isn’t fooled by the illusion. On the other hand, the information coming in through the ventral stream is routed through consciousness and the ventral system is fooled by the illusion.

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So - when you launch the “pick up the disk” routine, the routine uses information you don’t have access to. You are effectively launching a device that has better sensory apparatus and access to more information than you do.

Our bioborg nature leaves us well placed for mechanical augmentation, for a seamless integration of our onboard abilities with technologies in the world.

Exploiting the world

Cognitive scientists initially believed that we build rich inner analogs of the world, rather like inner maps. We now know that doing this on a large scale would be computationally too expensive. Instead, our brains often exploit enduring features of the world as external memory stores. All we need is a rough idea of what’s out there plus the ability to zoom in and get detailed information on a need-to-know basis.

When we look around a room we scan-and-zoom, scan-and-zoom. The scanning is called “saccading” and the zooming is called “foveating”. If a scene changes during a saccade we usually don’t notice. In a famous experiment the subject’s saccades were monitored by a computer. Changes were made to the scene during his saccades. These changes were obvious to the experimenters, who were standing behind him chuckling, but he couldn’t see them at all. This is called “change blindness”, and it can be demonstrated in various ways.

Dan Simons and Dan Levin set up a slapstick scenario on Cornell University campus. Somebody would pretend to be lost and would approach someone and ask for instructions. At that moment two people carrying a door would walk in between them. During this time the person who was “lost” would be replaced by somebody else - someone with different height, voice, clothing, and so on. Only 50 per cent of the people who were asked for instructions noticed the change.

We get a similar result with the so-called “flicker paradigm”. Click here, then click on “click here to start the Change Blindness demonstration.” You will see two different images that blink alternately. Can you see what keeps changing? It will be very obvious when you see it.

Clicking the right hand button on the mouse gives you a menu of other demonstrations. Try the next one … the boat.

These flickering figures illustrate change blindness. If we are not paying attention to just the right part of the picture we don’t notice the change. Once we have noticed it we find it hard to believe that we didn’t see it before, because now we can focus on the part of the picture that is changing.

What has this got to do with exploiting the world? Research shows that when we saccade around a room our eyes return to the same place time and again. We do this because that is where the information is. We don’t need rich inner models. We need a broad idea of what’s out there, plus the ability to zoom in and retrieve information when we need it. This is less demanding on memory and enables us to command a rich database - that is out there in the world.

From Bioborgs to Cyborgs

Our bioborg nature has operated in consort with our opportunistic brains to create out there cognitive technologies that complement our basic cognitive abilities. These technologies give us symbolic data stores in the world that we can manipulate and modify, and subsystems in the world that perform operations and processes by themselves - subsystems that are not in our heads but in the world.

Suppose you have to multiply large numbers, such as 777 x 77, with pencil and paper. You know that 7 x 7 = 49. You repeatedly perform this operation until you have finished the sum. Your mind loops out into the world, operating in consort with pencil and paper.

Now suppose you are doing your tax returns with a pocket calculator. This is similar to the previous case, but now we have a device in the world that performs operations for us. Your mind loops out into the world, operating in consort with the pocket calculator.

The next stage is the computer. Suppose you have to write a paper or a talk. You scribble some ideas, cross some out and add new ones. You throw them into a Word document. There was something you wrote a few months ago that might be relevant, but you can’t find the file. You click on Search and the computer finds it for you. You paste it across and print out the document. You get coffee, look at the document, scribble on it, and go back to the computer. You are engaged in a complex, creative loop with the computer.

These cases only tell part of the story, because they assume you already have language. And language is a technology in itself …

Language

Clark thinks that language was the first cognitive technology. Language gives us a “cognitive short-cut”. Research on chimpanzees shows that the use of plastic tokens enables them to reduce high-order abstract problems to lower-order problems their brains can handle.

Chimps were trained to associate a plastic token, such as a red triangle, with any pair of identical objects (such as two shoes) and to associate a differently shaped token with any pair of different objects (such as a beer can and a banana). The chimps could then solve the more complex problem of categorising pairs-of-pairs of objects in terms of higher-order sameness or difference. They could, for example, classify shoe-and-cup (different) as the same higher order relationship as beer-can-and-banana (also different). They could do this because both pairs would get the same kind of token. All they had to do was to compare the tokens.

Clark thinks that words work in the same way. They label complex concepts and enable us to "freeze" our thoughts, enabling us to think about them. (Is this a good idea? Should I put it into action?)

Language is what Clark calls a “transparent technology”. We are so well integrated with it that it is almost invisible in use. We are surrounded by such technologies (pens, watches, computers, telephones … ) and are rapidly developing new ones. “Pseudo-neural” implants in our bodies will communicate with one-another - where we are and how we are. Augmented reality will overlay our experience of the world with personalised information, beamed to us by satellite. Lost on campus we will enter “library”, don an eyeglass and see a green arrow pointing to the library.

Extended systems

Clark claims that we are so well integrated with these technologies that the problem-solving system is the biological system plus the technology. Suppose someone asks you if you know the time. You say that you do and then you look at your watch. You say that you know it because you know that you can easily find it out. And what does the knowing is the extended system of you-and-your-watch.

Suppose you have a chip on your shoulder that gives you easy access to information about women basketball players. Clark says that there is no relevant difference between accessing the information on the chip and accessing it in long-term memory. You know the information because you have easy access to it - and what does the knowing is you-and-the-chip.

Here is another example. At some time in the future you are in a car accident and suffer brain damage. You wake up in hospital and a doctor tells you that some of the information that was stored in the wetware of your brain has been transferred to silicon chips that have been implanted into your brain. From your point of view, however, nothing has changed. Your memories are intact.

If this happened we would say that some of the cognitive states that were in the wetware of your brain are now in the silicon chips that have been implanted in your head. It would make no difference to you, just so long as you had the same, easy access to the information.

Now suppose the chips weren’t put into your head but were implanted in your shoulder, or put in a safe place, such as a bank vault and kept in radio contact with your brain. So long as you had easy access to the information it wouldn’t matter where the chips were - in head, shoulder or bank vault. If they were outside your head some of your cognitive states would be outside your head - in your shoulder or in the bank vault.

Another example is Otto’s notebook. Otto suffers from Alzheimer's disease. He hears that there is an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. He consults his notebook, which says that the museum is on 53rd Street. He walks to 53rd Street and goes to the museum. The argument says that the notebook plays the same role for Otto that biological memory plays for the rest of us. It just happens that “this information lies beyond the skin”.

The claim is not only that Otto’s belief is out there in the world. It is that Otto believed the museum was on 53rd Street before he looked it up, courtesy of the functional isomorphism between the notebook entry and a corresponding “entry” in biological memory. If something is stored in biological memory we say that someone knows it before they access it. What difference does it make if it is stored in a notebook, rather than in biological memory?

Our Cyborg selves

Our effortless integration with our technologies makes us characteristically and distinctively human. It gives us much that we cherish about our species, including art, science and creativity, and the ability to explore the universe and ourselves.

Imagine what it would be like to lose these technologies. Alzheimer sufferers often live alone, quite successfully. They do so by leaving props and reminders everywhere: photographs of family and friends; labels and pictures on doors; “memory books” to record new events, meetings and plans. These things are always on open view, never hidden away. Putting these people into hospital can have tragic consequences. They are so integrated with their home environments that moving them inflicts a new damage, akin to brain damage, on an already compromised host.

It is the same with us. Our papers, pens, notebooks, diaries and computers complement our biological abilities. We would be impoverished - and less human - without them.

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This is an edited version of a talk given to the BrisScience Forum on June 19, 2006. The full text can be found here.



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About the Author

Terry Dartnall is a senior lecturer in the School of Information and Communication Technology at Griffith University, Nathan. Terry Dartnall's short story collection, The Ladder at the Bottom of the World, is available as an ebook from Trantor Publications.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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