The Extended Mind: Readings (Part 1)

I introduced the subject of technology-augmented thinking and communications in Intro to Mind Amplifiers. The envisioning and engineering of Licklider, Taylor, Engelbart, and PARC led to today's regime of networked personal computers. It's becoming clear that while the technology empowers everyone who knows the basics of how to use it, the real payoff depends on really knowing how to use these tools -- and your mind -- to best effect. A number of thinkers, philosophers and cognitive scientists as well as computer designers, are thinking ahead to the next era of augmentation -- what they call "the extended mind." This is the first in a series of posts recommending texts. Feel free to comment on this post. Patrons at the Howard's Community level and above will have access to a series of threads in our private forum (opening soon). This first post is public; subsequent posts in this series will be for patrons only. Sign up, please, and spread the word.

The primary tenet -- or heresy, depending on how you regard it -- of extended mind theory is that much of the human mind is now located outside our brains. This phenomena predates computers. Clark suggests trying to multiply two five-digit numbers in your head without reaching for a mind-extending pencil and paper.

Andy Clark and David Chalmers, The Extended Mind:

Before you read Andy Clark on Natural Born Cyborgs,  you can start with paper with David Chalmers, which extends Robert Logan's  arguments about the co-evolution of thought and communication media into the future. Although they don't talk of symbiosis in the  way Licklider did, Clark and Chalmers see the biological brain and the  cultural constructs (like knowing how to read or do arithmetic, using  alphabets and writing media) as a single, closely-coupled system: "In  these cases, the human organism is linked with an external entity in a  two-way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a  cognitive system in its own right. All the components in the system play  an active causal role, and they jointly govern behavior in the same  sort of way that cognition usually does. If we remove the external  component the system's behavioral competence will drop, just as it would  if we removed part of its brain. Our thesis is that this sort of  coupled process counts equally well as a cognitive process, whether or  not it is wholly in the head."

Howard Rheingold, Mind Amplifier: How Digital Media Can Make us Smarter 

In this short ebook, I make the case for connecting  Bush-Licklider-Engelbart ideas about intellectual augmentation  technology with Ivan Illich's framework of convivial technology, Elinor  Ostrom's notions about institutions for collective action, Joseph  Henrich's theories of the cultural evolution of cooperation, and  extended mind theories of Chalmers, Clark, and Logan. The ebook,  available for Kindle, Nook, and iPad, includes "extras" -- embedded  videos and links to web resources.

Robert K. Logan, The Extended Mind Model of the Origin of Knowledge and Culture.

Logan and his mentor/collaborator, Marshall McLuhan, extended the previous ideas of  Walter Innis and Walter Ong to make the case that the alphabet -- a  small set of abstract symbols that stand for speech sounds, which in  turn stand for things, actions, and ideas -- was a mind-extending and  ultimately mind-changing technology. Logan claims that thought and  language co-evolved, with words giving humans for the first time  containers for conceptual and well as perceptual thinking. Alphabets  train humans in complex mental habits and ways of thinking that favor  abstraction (an alphabetic character is an abstraction of a sound, which  is in turn an abstraction for meaning) and hierarchical organization  (alphabetical order was a prototype for the kind of knowledge-organizing  that characterized science).