Reader Deirdre points out that another phone commercial is at least at troubling as the Sprint Unlimited ad. According to this ad, The Droid is not an upgrade on your phone. It is an upgrade on yourself. And in case you missed the point, the DNA images imply an fundamental interface between you and your gadget. Great huh?
But Mark, since humans first picked up a stick, haven’t all of our tools been enhancing “us”?
Gene,
Wouldn’t you agree that there is a significant difference between enhancing my abilities (with a stick) and enhancing myself (by uniting with a machine)?
Mark, I would suggest you read Polanyi’s passages in _Personal Knowledge_ as to how becoming skilled with a tool (I think he uses a blind man’s walking stick as an example) involves making it an extension of one’s self.
By the by, I first realized this not using a cell phone but driving a fork lift: at a certain point, I came to feel the machine as if it were an extension of my body, feel the weight on the forks as if I were holding it myself, etc. It was at that point that I became a skilled driver.
I very much agree that things like a “right to be unlimited” are nonsense, but that doesn’t imply that tools are not a means of self-enhancement.
Gene,
I know the passage from Polanyi well. Polanyi is talking about appropriating tools and employing them as extensions of ourselves for the purpose of knowing. Watch the Droid commercial. The imagery suggests a human/machine interface that is quite different than Polanyi’s discussion of tools. “Enhancement” in the context of the commercial suggests a new way of being human–a fundamental change that extends to the level of our DNA. Polanyi was not suggesting anything like that. Now of course, no one really thinks that a fancy phone will work these kinds of fundamental changes, but the imagery takes us there and perhaps even softens us for future incursions by opening our minds to the possibility.
“the imagery takes us there and perhaps even softens us for future incursions by opening our minds to the possibility.”
I remember reading a news story not long ago about a tattoo “artist” who had magnets surgically implanted under his skin so that his “device” would not have to be held. I’m fully convinced that it’s only a matter of time before the devices themselves will be implanted — your cell phone will be in you. We’re heading towards Borg-dom.
“the devices themselves will be implanted”
Of course they will, Rob. Why is this more problematic than an artificial limb or heart?
Of course the utopianism that boats we will become “more than human” as a result is wrong. But the fear that this will make us inhuman is just the flip side of the same mistaken notion of what makes us human!
Gene, you’re being silly. Artificial organs are not enhancements over and above our nature, but an attempt to restore natural function or make up for deficiencies, but in either case with reference to a natural standard. They don’t evoke a consumer-fantasy response (“Cool, I want a plastic heart too!”). “Enhancements” are an extension into a new sphere of the infinite expansion of desire, the empire of money and formlessness, and the denial of death described succinctly by Aristotle (on which Polanyi also has an interesting essay).
“Gene, maybe you’re not aware of this but Mr. Mitchell knows Polanyi’s work pretty well — he wrote a book on him.”
Oh yeah, I read that one! I hadn’t made the connection. But then, why overlook Polanyi’s piont in making the above post.
“Gene, you’re being silly.”
No, you are. (Since we’re going to get childish, I’ll join in.)
“Artificial organs are not enhancements over and above our nature, but an attempt to restore natural function or make up for deficiencies, but in either case with reference to a natural standard.”
But plows and guns and cars and spears and fishing nets and fork lifts etc. etc. ARE all “enhancements over and above our nature”: what the heck does it matter whether they sit outside or inside the body?
Of course consumerist fantasies about escaping the human condition through consumption goods are sadly mistaken. But if *you* try to make this point turn on whether the consumption good sits inside or outside the body, *you* in fact discredit that very point, since nothing of any importance turns on where exactly the consumer good is located.
The point that *should* be made here is that having a smart phone inside your head does not alleviate your status as a fallen being in a fallen world, *not* “Oh my God, freaky! The phone sits in his head!”
Gene, maybe you’re not aware of this but Mr. Mitchell knows Polanyi’s work pretty well — he wrote a book on him.
Mark Shiffman: my thoughts exactly. And I knew someone would bring up artificial hearts, pacemakers, etc.
~~But plows and guns and cars and spears and fishing nets and fork lifts etc. etc. ARE all “enhancements over and above our nature”: what the heck does it matter whether they sit outside or inside the body?~~
Nonsense. Man is by nature a tool-using creature. But using scissors is one thing, while having your hands surgically altered to perform like scissors is another. It’s not simp;y about “location.” If you think it is go ahead and permanently sew your arse to the seat of your fork lift. Might change your opinion.
What Dr. Mitchell is alluding to, I think, is a fundamentally impious spirit that would treat the human body as something with no inherent integrity, that sees the body’s unity as something to be taken lightly and violated casually. The revulsion one feels at the thought of a smart phone installed in a man’s head seems to me to be related to the revulsion one might feel at the desecration of a loved one’s corpse. No one can convince me that such revulsion should be dismissed out of hand as “irrational”.
Of course it is true that all tools we use affect us, and help shape who we are — Plato argued this at length and a blacksmith’s arms demonstrates it. I will grant this to Prof Callahan — it’s silly to complain about, say, transhumanism while accepting the state of modern American consumerism whereby almost everybody is immersed in a technology-saturated, dehumanized existence. If we let our children fry their brains for hours on end with video games and Facebook, it does seem a little stupid to act surprised when they want to become cyborgs.
But such a point would hardly apply to Dr. Mitchell.
Anthropologist Peter C Reynolds coined a term “Technocracy” which he applied to modern western culture. Technocracy is the desire to give political power to technological progress, and it can be understood as a religion with its own mythology, methodology, liturgy, etc. Another way to understand Technocracy is what I call the “Cult of the Machine” which pervades the world around us. The Droid commercial is an excellent expression of it.
But to question technocracy doesn’t start or stop with phone commercials. Technocracy has its own rituals and liturgy (a good example of which is New Years Eve), its own mythology of progress and technological conquest, and the like. In the end, I think to wake up to the machine-worship that is a central aspect of our culture today is to find it everywhere from childbirth to funeral.
@Gene Callahan:
‘I very much agree that things like a “right to be unlimited” are nonsense, but that doesn’t imply that tools are not a means of self-enhancement.’
There’s a difference between self-enhancement through tool use and identifying oneself with one’s tools. A violinist is not a violin. A forklift driver is not a part of the forklift. A hunter is not a gun, nor is a gun a part of a hunter.
The complaint here isn’t about self-enhancement so much as *identifying oneself with one’s tools.”
I thought I’d point out that at the end of this commercial, the droid-enhanced man is still imprisoned in his chair.
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