Anticipating change

John Brockman reports on his talk with Frank Schirrmacher on "The age of the informavore" in edition 304 of the EDGE.org newsletter. I cite two passages and share my superficial thoughts on the matter. To read more about the book and informavores, see the full report on EDGE.org

Schirrmacher reports on Gerd Gigerenzer's idea that "thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body. And that's the Internet and it's the cloud. And very soon we will have the brain in the cloud.

How about using pens and paper for writing down ideas, doing calculations and small simulations, where the pen, paper and mind interact to make predicitions and judge their suitability to improve upon a real life situation; isn't that just the same thing as what Schirrmacher says about the Internet, where "thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside the human body"?

The Internet has its origins in the world of pens and paper and got a long way ever since, but all the paper in the world never developed into a brain. Why would the Internet develop into one? I could agree to saying that the Internet has caused the brains of nearly everyone on the planet to extend much further into the many corners of the world than they did in the talk- and paper-only age.

... (in) this digital age we are going through a fundamental change which includes how our brains function. But the presence or absence of free will is a trivial concern next to the big challenge confronting us: to recognize the radical nature of the changes that are occuring and to grasp an understanding of the process as our empirical advances blow apart our epistemological bases for thinking about who and what we are. "We're talking."

I look forward the the next age in which we supersede our reactive selves and say: "We're anticipating".