Neuroetics experts Saskia Nagel and Peter Reiner tell us what technologically expanded consciousness is, how we came to it, what dangers it poses, and why the fusion of devices and mind tells us that we are entering a new stage in the development of human intelligence.
iPhone, Pokemon Go, Big Data - we are so accustomed to modern technologies and so accustomed to them that we stopped noticing where the border between us and them, reality and virtuality lies. But what are the consequences of this and what threats does such a fusion carry? We are publishing a translation of a joint essay by Saskia Nagel, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Netherlands Twente, and Peter Rainer, a neuroethics specialist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, in which they tell what technologically expanded consciousness is, what dangers it poses and what prospects it opens up for us.
Like life itself, technology evolves. So the phone became a smartphone - a handy close portal to the information transport network. We've spent most of a decade with these powerful devices in our hands, but there is a clear feeling that something has changed in recent years, that our relationship with technology is becoming more intimate. Some people fear that soon one day we will be able to physically connect computer chips to our minds, but in reality there is no need for this: physical connection is a distraction. The real challenge lies in the seamless way that our cognitive space is already hybridizing with our devices. From day to day they penetrate deeper and deeper and become an extension of our consciousnesses.
To get a feel for this, imagine that you and a group of friends begin to discuss a movie. One person wonders out loud who the director is. If there are no moviegoers among you, guesswork will follow. But very quickly someone will answer: "I'll google it." What's unusual about this situation is how common it has become. Our devices have become so deeply embedded in our lives that we hope they will give us access to the full range of Internet offerings at any time.
This process of mixing our minds and devices forces us to take stock of who we are and who we want to be. Consider the question of independence - perhaps the most cherished of rights that we inherited from the Enlightenment. The word means self-government and refers to our ability to make decisions for ourselves and for ourselves. This is a hard-won form of personal freedom and the general trajectory of movement of Western societies over the past 300 years - towards greater human power and less - social institutions.
The first hunch that modern technology could jeopardize independence came in 1957, when an American marketing executive named James Vicari announced that movie theater food and beverage sales were boosted by the blinking messages “Drink Coca-Cola” and “Hungry? Eat popcorn. " The story turned out to be a fake, but after paying attention to this kind of demonstration, The New Yorker stated that "the mind was gently hacked and opened." These days, we regularly hear the news about neuromarketing, an insidious strategy by which marketers use discoveries in neuropsychology to read our minds - as they search our brains for a “buy button”. Until today, none of these manipulation plans have been successfully implemented.
But the threat to independence remains. Convincing technologies to change attitudes and behavior are being deployed in every corner of society. They are created not so much by software engineers as by "social engineers" - specialists who understand social psychology and human behavior. The mildest of these technologies "push" us to make certain decisions about health, wealth, and well-being. In the world of online commerce, they seek to grab our attention by nefariously forcing us to linger on web pages for a few extra moments - in the hope that we will make a purchase. But it's hard not to be cynical when Facebook is experimenting with over 680,000 loyal users in which the social network secretly manipulates their emotions. Or when the choice of undecided voters can be shifted by as much as 20 percent by simply altering Google search rankings. This, of course, is nothing new about persuasion. But the ability to do this in a hidden format exists for one simple reason: we gave the "social engineers" access to our minds.
This brings us to the threat of privacy. Back in 1890, future US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandes, together with his Boston legal partner Samuel Warren, published an article entitled "The Right to Privacy." They hypothesized that when the law was drafted as codified agreements between early societies, redress was always intended only for physical interference with life and property. Over time, society became aware of the value of the inner life of people and the protection of physical property expanded to include the results of intellectual activity - trademarks and copyrights, for example. But the rapid development and ubiquity of the use of technology (apparently, it all started with the first paparazzi to appear on the stage, and that concern about photographs,appearing in newspapers) have raised new problems.
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Today's worries are not much different from past ones, except that photos can be snatched from your personal life through any of your devices. Indeed, the fact that existing institutions have access to information about our devices, openly or surreptitiously, worries people: 93 percent of adults say it is very important for them to be aware of who can get information about them. But in the post-Snowden era, the discussion of privacy in the context of technology can span too wide a range of possible violations - and we need to deal with the question of how to distinguish between privacy and the inviolability of private thought.
These questions are important - not only because they pose ethical issues. They highlight the implications for our perception of ourselves as a human being can have with the combination of consciousness and devices. Andy Clarke, a philosopher who, more than anyone else, supports the concept of expansion of consciousness, claims that humans are cyborgs, born naturally. If this is the case, if we are constantly introducing external devices into our daily routine of thinking and being, then we may be overestimating the oneness of the human brain for the concept of consciousness. Perhaps a new, technologically expanded consciousness is not something to fear, but something to look out for.
The fruits of the Enlightenment allowed us to consider ourselves as separate individuals navigating this world with the help of our sharp mind alone. This persistent cultural meme has weakened, especially over the past decade, as social neuroscience research has emphasized the social basis of our personalities. Our relationship with devices provides us with useful new advice: we have entered an era that American engineer and inventor Danny Hillis has called "the era of entanglement." We are now technologically advanced beings, surrounded and constantly influenced by modern devices.
In 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world with the words "this will change everything." What we did not know then, that this is “everything” - and we are ourselves.