Friday, October 12, 2012

Kurzweil: The Cloud Will Expand Human Brain Capacity

This idea is over 15 years old - Andy Clark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Clark), for one, argued that the use of computers can be viewed as an 'extension of the mind' vis. a 'tightly coupled dynamical system'.

It's an interesting argument, but if you don't draw the line at the human body, I think it's sort of arbitrary to draw the line at the 'usage of a tool' boundary. why not include the servers a computer communicates with? the telephone poles that support the wires transmitting the data? etc etc.

There's the question of 'what is the human body' which is certainly interesting, but I just think it's a more appropriate scope to deal with. You can measure hormonal influence on neural activity, but once you get outside of the body I'd contend it's anyone's game.

The one point Andy Clark does make that I think is really good is : language vis. a symbol can exist simultaneously internally and externally from the body - IE, as a representation and external symbolic language. I really think that's the interesting point, rather than some bullshit about computers/the cloud/ whatever extending the human mind. it's really language that extends the human mind, and I'm sure kant/clark/heidegger/chomsky/dennet would back me up on this.

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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/rEfPQKvIBsg/kurzweil-the-cloud-will-expand-human-brain-capacity

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