Years ago, I pursued all this, but only had the library stacks for my sources. One wave (circa 81-83) of that reading was on technology, and how it changed us. Mumford, Ellul, Jerry Mander, economic historians, Roszak, Marx, and a guy I really focussed on - as computers were revving up - Joseph Weizenbaum. They had very little neuro-stuff to support them, but used history, anthropology, drug use, religion, etc.

What I looked at a lot was how things we began to use as "prosthetics" actually shifted the balance across our senses. A tv or film, for instance, amongst millions of other things they do, turns our neck for us, focusses out eyes where it wants - disengaging our bodies in interesting ways. Driving in a car and "seeing" a countryside is utterly different than walking through it. Smell and sound shrinks, for instance. But replacing and extending - these positive terms - some senses (cars being like longer legs) also meant shrinking of these other aspects.

Use those techs for 000's of hours, and it changes you. Which is when I stopped with the bibliophilia so many academics had. I started to see the book/text as a very particular technology, that changed our brains and senses in extraordinary ways. Loss of oral capabilities, including memory, being an obvious thing downgraded, as pointed out by Socrates and others. And for me, coming from a strong oral tradition, that was a real and noticeable loss. Weizenbaum was looking at how computers were convincing us that everything was "calculation" - which he opposed to a deeper and wider and wiser way we humans can sometimes function, namely "judgment." Another shift of the mind/society.

Now, I've done NO comprehensive reading on this stuff since then - 1986/87. What I find from time to time are interesting debates triggered by someone's book or article. Going to the Jaynes site or Wiki is useful, because it leads you to a lot of people that have gone on thinking about how the mind changed then and now. That recent Carr debate - Google/Stupid - led to some really interesting debates at the Edge place and others. So I suspect you'll find threads there that draw you off deeper into the stacks til you find what really answers what you're after.

A really useful book for me is the Doidge one. (Which my incredibly sexy and brilliant girlfriend just reminded me, was originally suggested not by my school buds, but by a certain incredibly sexy and brilliant girlfriend. So shout out to the marvelous M!)

Doidge gets into some cool stuff - though it may be pretty much a layman's or secondary source for you. But the cannibalization of parts of the brain - when new sensory input mechanisms were attached, or systems rewired and regenerated - was really interesting. For instance, the people who came to be able to sense through touching their skin - on the back and elsewhere. And then, where the neurons regrew, the brain literally rewired. Some inputs up, some retreating in importance.

What I've been poking at in some of my comments is that I think our brains are ALREADY being massively rewired. And that it's going to knock a lot of people out of balance. You can see a lot of that in the debate around to what degree kids today can't concentrate... have ADD... can't do deep reading or thinking... skim or skate across ideas... have different kinds of social relation ships... etc. Beneath this, they're not just saying that these kids have chosen to lose these functions, or are willful little bastards, but rather the neuro question is... are their brains eroding these capabilities or making these skills of less weight in the overall final integration within our minds?

And my guess is... yes, that is likely to happen. BUT. I'm not convinced the shift to the book and text and libraries and such created a 100% perfect and final brain state.

And what if our culture has produced a whole whack of analogies and images, drilled into us as part of prepping us for READING, laying down mind patterns and connections, that help this process succeed? One of these might well be the idea that we have such a single clear, deep, FOUNDATIONAL "self." Your image of the "ground floor" and then the difficulties if other things are seen as "optional."

Well... what if it's not one ground floor, and then any different perspective or contribution is seen as "optional"... but rather we begin to take MULTIPLICITY as the major truth? That we have multiple ages, feelings, values, etc.... and that they're applied in different settings etc.? We've learned to fear that, as leading to relativism etc. But long ago I began feeling like this was a bogeyman, and that the people babbling against relativism were often THEMSELVES living with multiple takes on life, but just not able to take that fully onboard.

I think this is one of the central changes we're going to have to make - from uni to multi. Another perhaps being... constant change, shift, transition. And another being SOCIAL DIFFERENCE, penetrating right down to the person and what they sense. Like this. Remember the UV rant I went on? Well, the TED video you linked to has buddy talking about implants that will help the blind see. And then... see even better than us. INCLUDING in the UV. The brain books all tell us that to make sense of that, SOME area of the brain is going to have to be mapped to do this. So some other parts are gonna be de-emphasized right there, have less brain map room. On top of that, the new UV input is gonna have to be connected up to central processor world, where its input will compete again against those of other senses. Now in these guys can then see in the UV, other colors are gonna be literally less important. And 3rdly, they're gonna see animals and birds and skies and OUR OWN FACES differently. And sometimes those differences are gonna be regarded as important, and thus drive over the other colors and senses even more. So whole levels at which upgrading one sense is gonna change the others.

How do I DEAL with that? Personally, I think one major analogue that will spring to the fore again is to the times when we lived closer with other species. Animals. Early humans watched and respected the skills and actions of other animals much more than we do. We've worked hard to see all races and sexes as basically running of the same template. Ok, fair enough. But if people have VERY different human senses and skills, and even values, the question becomes are we gonna reject them as "lower" forms of life, the way industrialized man sees animals, (or saw other races and sexes) or... see these other people as amazing other forms, which we are akin to, but also different from?

My take is that I would LOVE it. I can happily say to them - you have the same "human" rights as I do, but I want to learn what YOU'RE learning. Hell, I've always wanted to talk to wolves and bears, so if a person can see or smell or move more like them and come back and tell me about it... cool! Wolverine lives!

The problems that will flow from that are massive, of course. But people forget how they were also massive as we moved to print and the book. Priesthoods using it as a source of power. The oppression that came to those who were non-literate. And then, to those who wanted alternative books/texts. The downplaying of those whose skillsets and brains weren't well-wired for books.

One other thing that I suspect will - must - come out of this. I wasn't joking when I said that a major part of our brain is now... the brains of other people. We all have had thoughts about the way calculators enabled us to not have to do certain mathematical processes. But in a webby world, with Wiki and Google, but also with a million fora, other people's brains are more and more wired into ours. Those who fear we'll all become stupid, and the thing will hurtle toward a LCD have some legit fears. But. It may just be that we come to more and more value the contributions of others, and the diversity of others. Not just in some racial or cultural way, but as in they may have very different interests, values, senses, experiences. As long as those experiences can be in some sense shared with me, does that make me poorer or richer? Isn't this like having a better library? Plus??

This, for me, is my 5th wave of interesting engagement with electronic/web world. First, was my thesis in 82/83. Where I argued that Weizenbaum's fear of computers overhyping "calculation" might actually be sideswiped by the much more interesting "communications" possibilities which people were creating. 2nd, when writing in 86/87. When I wanted, and sketched, constantly, some kind of system that went beyond the book, to hyperlinked text, music and video, historical documents and personal diary. BOTH times, I had nothing to do with their creation, others were light years ahead. But the FEARS about these techs were overrun by the potential to create, and in the end... conservative as I was... I chose that path. Rightly, I think. The 3rd one was when I got into e-mail with a half-dozen friends, early 90's. And these e-interactions ended up being written up in magazines, with people - including us - surprised at how important it became as we dealt with death, divorce, health, and a ton of intellectual issues as well. 4th round, starting '97 or so maybe, was using the web as a research tool and activist network. Absolutely mindblowingly positive results. By FAR the best research I've ever done, and the most impact from the activism. And now, 5th round, Blogging. In which what I'd wanted in round 2, back in 1987, has come walking onto my screen. Joy.

The real people to talk to on this are the ones that created these tools, or who revved them up and took them for a spin. As I say, I'm never at the bleeding edge. I lag, by years. But I find less and less to fear in these changes. My own brain has changed, sure. As has my sense of self. Reading a book is not what is was, for instance. My sense of speed is hugely different. But the bullshit bogeyman stuff... it hasn't really turned out that way. Not in my world anyway.

There. Too much, once again. But always fun to chat on dead threads, eh? Onward!!