
An iPhone Is an Extension of the Mind - chewymouse
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/02/apple_and_the_fbi_think_iphones_are_safes_a_philosopher_explains_what_they.single.html
======
mbrock
McLuhan:

> With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside
> his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the
> wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a
> collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead,
> extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous
> field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man
> around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total
> uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We
> have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the
> commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard
> published _The Concept of Dread_.

~~~
drdeca
Is "the concept of dread" the same work as "the concept of anxiety" with a
different translation of the title, or are they different works?

~~~
mbrock
Yeah, different translations. The Danish is "angest" or "angst."

As a native Swedish speaker, I find the common identification of "anxiety" and
"ångest" a little strange, because of the strong existential connotations of
the latter word...

But it's interesting how McLuhan insinuates a connection between angst in the
existential sense and this spatial displacement of the nervous system.

By the way, the quote is from his essay "The Agenbite of Outwit".

[http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-
studies/v1_iss2/1_...](http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-
studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm)

------
sandworm101
>> The FBI isn’t asking to access an uncrackable safe. It wants to compromise
the boundaries of the self.

No. These are phones, not implants. The FBI wants to crack encryption, not
skulls. Anyone who equates access to phones with scifi mind scanning needs
perspective. If you find your meat self indistinguishable from your "networked
self" then you need to get out of the matrix once and a while. Some of us, I
think most of us, still have internal and interpersonal lives that are not
shared with our devices.

>> There is no reason to allow corporate access to our minds while vigorously
denying state access.

Yes there is. A corporation doesn't have access to weaponized drones (at least
not yet;). A corporation doesn't want to kill its customers. It wants them
happy and spending. On the other hand, governments often want and do kill. A
government does not necessarily want its people happy. Therefore, data in the
hands of corporations is a very different scenario than data in the hand of
government. They should not be equated.

~~~
sithadmin
>Some of us, I think most of us, still have internal and interpersonal lives
that are not shared with our devices.

I'm having difficulty thinking of a single part of my life that isn't shared
with my devices.

My smartphone can be used to discover where I am at any given time, and where
I probably was at any given time. Reasonable guesses about my state of mind
and stream of thoughts could be constructed from my search history on the
device. It can access any and all of my personal documents, photos, and
financial information. It provides access to a matrix of nearly all of my
social and professional contacts, and a fair bit of history regarding my
current and historical interactions with them. It provides access to entry and
exit logs for the doors and windows in my home, recordings of all persons
approaching or entering its doors, and even logs about which lights I turn on
and when.

Most noteworthy is that the information above is almost certainly of higher
quality and breadth than anything law enforcement previously (in a pre-digital
age) could have assembled on their own.

~~~
sandworm101
Put it down and back away from the phone. There are some of us old enough to
remember the days when phone+internet was a thing. Work got done, very good
work.

Law enforcement still physically follow people. They can get a location, but a
phone in a pocket cannot understand what a person is doing at a location, or
even who they talk to. And phones are subject to massive disinformation. (ie
plant phone on someone else/leave on bus). So it is impossible for a cop at
any terminal to replicate the quality of information gained by a physical
tail.

~~~
sithadmin
>There are some of us old enough to remember the days when phone+internet was
a thing. Work got done, very good work.

I don't care how old you happen to be, or how rose-tinted your memories are.
My smartphone and associated personal devices and services allow me to meet
business, personal, and social goals in an efficient and effective manner. I
have access to better information and get things done more quickly with my
phone than without. I don't find it to be a drain on my productivity or my
lifestyle.

>a phone in a pocket cannot understand what a person is doing at a location,
or even who they talk to. And phones are subject to massive disinformation.
(ie plant phone on someone else/leave on bus). So it is impossible for a cop
at any terminal to replicate the quality of information gained by a physical
tail.

This is irrelevant. Law enforcement and prosecutors tend to weaponize whatever
personal data can be gleaned from civilians they are targeting, regardless of
quality. Aside from my own personal measures to ensure such data is reasonably
difficult for an unauthorized party to obtain, there ought to be strong
controls on the ability of the state and its agents to acquire such data.

------
rqebmm
According to the author communication of information to a 3rd party, either
another person, or a smartphone, or a pad of paper, is all an "extension of
the mind". This premise equivocates the contents of a device, to the contents
of a computer to a persons spoken and written word. To me this all makes sense
that a repository of information that was communicated from one's mind can be
considered an "extension" of it.

He then posits the money question "How much of ourselves should we give over
to the state?"

However, it's a huge leap to treat this like a new issue. Humans have been
storing mental processes with 3rd parties since the literal beginning of
history, and storing them with non-human parties since literally the first
written word. This necessarily existed before the "state" in any sense (as a
state requires laws, which have to be somehow commuincated.) This means that
this debate has been ongoing since literally the beginning of governments.

How/why/when/where the state handles spoken conversations vs written records
vs computer records are concepts that have been fairly well established in
both US and international law. People certainly hold varying viewpoints, but
to contextualize that debate as new because of recent technological advances
or the latest news seems clickbaity.

------
SigmundA
I think this is a good philosophical debate that needs to be explored, however
I am not sure how I see the safe argument as a poor analog.

On one hand the article proposes that writing something down on paper is an
extension of the mind, yet does not even mention the obvious situation that
must occur on a regular basis of confidential papers in a safe. These are
admissible correct?

I still am searching for something new about smartphone vs older technology
such as safes and paper, which must have hundreds of years of legal precedent
to reference. Even the idea that the safe destroys it's contents if tampered
with is not new
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex)).

------
citizensixteen
>The FBI isn’t asking to access an uncrackable safe. It wants to compromise
the boundaries of the self.

This article brings up the concept of cognitive liberty. The more we rely on
technology and AI the more this may become a concern.

"Cognitive liberty, or the "right to mental self-determination", is the
freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes,
cognition, and consciousness. It has been argued to be both an extension of,
and the principle underlying, the right to freedom of thought. Though a
relatively recently defined concept, many theorists see cognitive liberty as
being of increasing importance as technological advances in neuroscience allow
for an ever-expanding ability to directly influence consciousness."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty)

~~~
rogersmith
"the freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes,
cognition, and consciousness."

if this is a real thing, most of what passes for "education" these days
tramples this right extensively.

------
Zikes
How many old laws do we now lament for their lack of foresight or for having
been written in a time well before technology like today's could have even
been imagined?

Here we have the opportunity to do the opposite. It is inevitable, given the
trends in technology, that we will someday be able to directly integrate
computing devices into our minds in some way. Perhaps we would use them to
store memories themselves, or offload the processing of difficult thoughts or
problems. It's hard to say, but if you can imagine controlling a smartphone or
computer with only your mind then it's not too hard to imagine all the other
potential uses.

We have the opportunity to get it right, here and now. Let's not waste it.

------
wahsd
There we go! I've been waiting about at least 5 years for someone to write
this up. It needs to be carried a little further and the current circumstances
will determine what the future holds, but I'm just glad this has been put out.

It will become interesting once the "mind reading" technologies become more
accurate though. What happens when you can read someone's mind in passing to,
e.g., call their pin that has been established as protected under the
Constitution. Look for wire mesh balaclava fashions in the future.

------
jsprogrammer
>If that is the sole, correct framing of the issue, then society faces a
simple question of how to interpret existing statutes in light of
constitutional constraints.

It is not the sole framing, nor is it correct. The order is not to weaken the
encryption scheme, but to override the kill switch, on a specific phone, that
will disable the device if too many incorrect login attempts are made.

~~~
zaroth
The core security of any password based encryption is the means to slow or
prevent brute force attacks on the password. Weakening the PBKDF to make brute
forcing possible is exactly the definition of weakening the scheme.

There are at least 9 phones they want this on today, and other sources have
"hundreds" more. So you can say they want to do this on "any specific" phone,
but I hope we're well past debating this as if we're talking about a single
phone ever.

I couldn't be happier with yesterday's ruling denying the government motion to
compel using AWA in a similar case. I think we can see the forest for the
trees in these case and should have an honest debate about how much police
should be able to control the software on our devices, without trying to skirt
the issue by tying it to a particularly haneous crime.

I'm convinced and I believe it's well understood and settled that if AWA works
the way the Fed wants in a specific case, it works in every single
investigation, regardless of the brand of device or type of software.
Magistrate Judge Orenstein certainly saw it that way.

~~~
jsprogrammer
An encryption scheme should not be weakenable after the physical medium has
been compromised. An encryption scheme is purely a feature of the data, not of
the device. An encryption scheme should only be susceptible to brute force
attacks and Apple is not being asked to perform a brute force attack, but
rather, to deactivate their kill switch.

If you read the order, the software to deactivate the kill switch is only
supposed to work with one particular iPhone and Apple is under no obligation
to deliver that software to anyone; they are only required to provide access
to the device without fear of the kill switch.

------
amelius
s/iPhone/smartphone/g

------
Chefkoochooloo
I find the argument that the phone is an "extension of the mind" to be really
interesting. If you think about it, doesn't our phone track our behaviors,
suggest words when texting, etc.? Our phones are with us almost every single
second of the day and we use these phones and store massive amounts of private
and personal data and should we be forced to give over that data when forced
to? I do not know the answer to this but this opens up the doors for
conversations we need to have in such a fast-paced technology world.

------
diskcat
A book is also an extension of the mind.

~~~
melling
Paper notebooks might be.
[http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/inside-
leona...](http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/inside-leonardo-s-
notebook.html)

The cell phone, etc will be a much bigger extension. However, we still need
better ways to input, organize and access the information. Handwritten notes,
voice memos, pictures, drawings, unstructured and structured data, etc.

Cortana/Siri with hand tracking (
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0)
) and a HoloLens will allow people to organize everything in creative ways.

------
eternalban
I see these poor young zombies in the street stupefied by their 'smart'
digital pacifiers and thank heavens I quickly weaned myself off and back to
using just a plain jane phone.

~~~
mbrock
What makes you think they're "zombies" or "stupefied"?

~~~
eternalban
Daily slaloms around situationally unaware/uncaring moving bodies in street
crossings, subway egress zones, ...

Remember kids, this flower of your youth is precious precious precious. Do not
waste it glued to a screen.

~~~
mbrock
They're probably just talking with their friends. How is that more of a waste
of youth than going around staring at the pavement?

If they were zombies they wouldn't be bumping accidentally into you on the
sidewalk. They'd be trying to eat your flesh or something.

