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JASON SILVA: You know, there is a constant debate that
takes place when looking at the subject of technology,
between people that argue that technology is part of who we
are, and those that believe that technology is fundamentally
unnatural, and that it's a tool that's being used ultimately
to destroy the world.
I don't fall into that camp.
I echo Kevin Kelly's ideas that stipulate
that actually technology is the real skin of our species.
Technology is the exterioration of our nervous system.
Technology is our extended mind.
I phone, therefore I am.
But think about it-- technology is literally the way
we turn our mind inside out, right?
The cognitive philosophers, Andy Clark and David Chalmers
describe it as a kind of scaffolding
that extends our thoughts, our reach, and our vision.
We are a tool-making animal that has
been in a symbiotic feedback loop with technology
since the beginning of stone tools.
I mean, think about it-- once we created stone tools,
our jaws shrank.
Once we discovered that fire could cook our foods,
making every meal more efficient,
it freed up the cognitive real estate
necessary for the emergence of culture, religion, and arts.
So you might say that who we are is
due to the feedback loops between us and our tools,
to the degree that our tools become extended appendages
that, even though they are not within our biological skin
tissue, they are nonetheless a part of our cognitive arsenal.
They are a part of us, the same way a nest is a part of a bird,
and a spider's web is a part of the spider.
It is our extended phenotype.
It is who we are.
It is our termites' colony, it is temperature-controlled,
it is the extension of our mindedness.
This is technology, this is the technium,
the seventh kingdom of life.
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