Using Google Glass, the glasses which project an interactive digital interface onto your field of vision, is like being the Terminator or Iron Man. Instead of looking at what's in your environment and using just your brain to interpret the information, now you have a computer always there to do it for you. You don't need to try and remember something manually, you can just look it up on your ever-present search engine. You can say 'google maps' and a map system appears over the real roads, then you say 'go to Fleet Street' (or something) and Google Glass shows you arrows to guide you. You don't have to work out your own position on the map or orientate yourself, you don't even have to get your phone out.
We have a situation where it becomes so convenient to use technology, it would be illogical and highly inefficient to use our own brains to work something out. It would be the stubbornness of a sentimental Luddite. You don't try and remember your shopping list in your mind; you write it down, you accept the limitations of your brain and seek help from technology. The rationale for using Google Glass is just a simple extrapolation of this logic.
David Chalmers, philosopher, talks about 'the extended mind' (see video below). He thinks that we should not see ever-present technology as separate to our minds but as an active part of them. If we always have the technology with us, then it may as well be an extension of our brains. It's not lazy to look something up on Google as opposed to trying to remember it, it's efficient, it's evolution. Google's memory is your memory.
When Google Glass becomes widespread, technology will finally be part of us, one step closer to a ubiquitous chip in the brain. Futurologists of the past got it wrong: the robots won't become sentient and take over, we will become robots ourselves, and this might be a good thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment