

Are iPhones and Blackberries becoming extensions of our thinking selves? - liuhenry
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/out-of-our-brains/?hp

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elblanco
No, but my Android phone is.

In all seriousness, having migrated from a BB to a more modern phone
architecture (iPhone or Android, take your pick), I feel like it is much more
an extension of self than my BB ever was. Even if I have no particular need to
use it, I can feel my heart palpitating if my battery starts to get low.

I've been wondering about this recently...why does my current phone feel so
much more part of "me" than my BB ever did? I think it's because I feel like
my computer is a part of me and my Android phone feels like a powerful enough
device (and is customizable enough) that I can make it reflect what I want to
do. I could never _quite_ get there with my BB, and the performance was never
quite up to snuff enough to use it for quick internet activities.

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Qz
My pet theory is that the mind has never been in the brain, in the same way
that computers are only as useful as the software they run, software which
originates outside the computer. Language itself is the home of sentience, and
people are just processors. Minds are an illusion.

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i386
Interesting - Charles Stross covered the "machines as an extension of your
mind" idea in Accelerando.

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danilocampos
Thought of the same thing. I read Accelerando after the iPhone had been part
of my daily life for about three years.

It's absolutely an early flavor of the book's idea of a "metacortex." You
never need to say "I wonder..." when something is in doubt. You just look it
up. If you're bored, you can keep your brain awash in new data. If you need to
communicate with others through virtually any digital medium, it's a tap or
two away.

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gte910h
Taking a class from this
guy:[http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/official/thad.starner/wh...](http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/official/thad.starner/while)
at Georgia Tech a decade ago made it sound like it was quite definitely part
of him by that part. (Look at the picture to see what "it" is).

Pretty interesting professor, although he'd occasionally just stop mid-
sentence to do something on his eyepiece. We joked he was garbage
collecting...

