Technology: Extensions of our biology

Technologies are extensions of our biological selves. While humans may not run the fastest or see the farthest, no species has created technologies to extend their biological capabilities more than humans. Other species use stones rather than teeth to crack things, sticks to hit things and chimpanzees even make tools to eat termites from leaves. Other than humans, no surviving species even makes stone tools, something several non human hominids were able to accomplish.

The flood of technology is a rather recent phenomenon for humans. Assuming our species is 100,000 years old, we spent the first 94,000 years making tools from wood, bone and stone. Only six thousand years ago did we figure out how to extract metals from ores and make bronze. It was another 500 years before we figured out how to make wheeled carts and created writing. Today some technologies are made from compounds that never appeared in nature before we created them. The technologies are not limited to mechanical devices but include drugs, electronics and mental systems (e.g., mathematics, bureaucracy). The speed with which new technologies are being created and introduced is increasing. More technology will be created in your life time than was created in the 100,000 years prior to your birth.

These technologies have included nearly every part of our bodies. We have technologies to extend our limbs, organs and even our thoughts.

Writing - Writing is a rather recent phenomenon (5,500 years) and a language with an alphabet (3,500 years) even more recent. Writing was an important technology in that it extends both our brains, which store and manipulate information, and our speech, which transfers information from one brain to another. The first storage media of clay tables and papyrus have evolved to film, video tape, CD ROMS and other forms of electronic storage. In today's world we use brain extenders for even small memory tasks. Waiters write down our dinner order, professionals use organizers to track appointments and "to do lists" are a must for nearly everyone. Written language enhanced our ability to store and exchange mental images in several ways:

  1. Information could be exchanged without face-to-face interaction.
  2. The sender can more easily review and edit information prior to sending it.
  3. Readers can review the information without impinging on the sender.
  4. Readers can take in information faster that listeners.
  5. Information storage is increased beyond the capacity of a brain.

External storage changed the mental images of humans. The images became more reliable, more accurate and more complex.

Virtually any technology that stores information external to the brain will improve the consistency or reliability of mental images both intrapersonally and interpersonally. While the brain is a truly remarkable organ, there are serious limitations to its storage capabilities. To store information, the brain "tears images apart" and stores them in different locations. Form goes to one portion of the brain, while color is stored in another. To recall previous images, the brain must "reassemble" the information. Given such a method, it should not surprise us that studies of recall demonstrate that brains are not very reliable tools for storing information.

Brain storage has another serious shortcoming - brains die. Dead brains lose the ability to store and transfer information. Externally stored information allows information from the original source to remain intact after the organism itself had died. Without writing, Europeans would not have discovered the thoughts of the ancient Greeks. Nor could we have direct access to the words of Parsons, Mead (Margaret or George Herbert) or Marx. Information stored only in a brain to society, possibly forever. One of the more famous examples of such a loss is Fermat's last theorem. Fermat had written in his notes that he had an easy solution to the theorem but he never bothered to write it down. This loss of information has troubled mathematicians for centuries.

Like writing, photography enhanced our ability to store and share mental images. Try to recall a mental image of your best friend. Verbally describe that person's appearance such that a third person could pick the friend out at a police line-up. Now look at a photo of that friend. Is your mental image of the friend enhanced? Could the third person more easily pick your friend out of the line-up with the photo or your verbal description? Like writing, the photo has increased the consistency of mental images at both the intrapersonal and interpersonal levels.

While some lament the loss of imagination as we moved from radio to television, the reality is that television increased the consistency of shared mental images between writers, producers and audience. When hearing a radio broadcast, audience members "fill-in" the missing visual information. Television may take away the imagination, but it creates more consistency in the mental images that are exchanged.

Just as information can vary in its reliability or consistency, information can be accurate or inaccurate. Studies have documented that memory has a tendency to reconstruct itself. Over time memory changes. Written information however, does not rearrange itself without deliberate intervention. Shifting from brain storage to paper storage increased the accuracy of information.

The accuracy of information becomes even more problematic when we attempt to move information one brain to another. From a popular party game, we understand the problem of communicating information verbally from Person A to Person Z going through Persons B - Y. Merely passing a note from one person to the next is far more accurate. When moving information from one brain to another, written information is far superior to verbal transfer.

Only recently (October 1992) did Pope John Paul II formally proclaim that the Church had incorrectly condemned Galileo for his views that the earth was not the center of the universe. Without writing, poor Galileo would probably still be thought guilty. Who among us would be certain if it were Galileo or the Church that claimed the earth circled the sun? With external storage we are certain who was on what side and the church was able to correct a 400 year mistake.

Externally stored images also exert pressures toward more complex mental images. First, the writer can more easily edit and modify her mental images than can the story teller. A complex problem can be more easily broken into smaller sections and reassembled. Some complex mental transformations may require high level mathematics than could not be accomplished without writing. Similarly, the reader can follow a more complex argument by rereading and breaking down the train of thought.

Mathematics- Human brains have a biological capability to understand quantities. Intuitively we recognize greater and lesser amounts. Mathematical systems like algebra, trigonometry and calculus have proven very successful for better understanding our environment and building technologies. Without mathematics we could not build large buildings, generate electricity, or understand the cosmos.

The Computer

The computer improves many of the brain extending capabilities of the written word. Basic improvements in accuracy, storage, speed and accessibility of information have already been realized by improvements in computer related technologies. But the computer goes beyond these basics to add new dimensions to our control of information.