The Smartphone is One of the Externalizations of the Mind that Aspires to the Status of its Extension
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18662/po/46Keywords:
Smartphone, extension of consciousness, mind outsourcing,Abstract
Is the Smartphone (SP) an extension of consciousness or just an (other) externalization of the mind and an extension of the social? The concept of externalizing the mind more appropriately describes a series of processes that tend to be considered extensions of the mind. The human mind has evolved concurrently with various externalizations, such as utensils and language, as contributions to the development of the common environment of humanity: culture and civilization. Externalizations indicate the appearance of the human mind while the extensions take into account the possibility of passing to another level (the singularity of consciousness). SP is a handy tool that mediates the personal relationship with the world, benefiting from a level of integration into the global workspace of the mind. Externalization called the SP could be a bridge from the externalization of the mind to its extensions, making the ontological leap from the utensil status to that of "part of the mind". SP is a mediator of an environment: it mediates between the mind and a special social environment called the Internet (mediates access to cognitive support provided by society through the virtual world), which is gradually becoming another realityReferences
Abramova, O., Baumann, A., Krasnova, H., & Lessmann, S. (2017). To phub or not to phub: Understanding off-task smartphone usage and its consequences in the academic environment. In I. Ramos, V. Tuunainen & H. Krcmar (Coords.), Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) (pp. 1984-1999). Guimarães, Portugal.
Baars, B. J. (1997). In the theatre of consciousness, global workspace theory, a rigorous scientific theory of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4(4), 292-309. Retrieved from http://www.wisebrain.org/media/Papers/BaarsTheaterConsciousness.pdf
Baars, B. J. (2005). Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience? Progress in Brain Research, 150, 45-53. doi:10.1016/s0079-6123(05)50004-9
Barr, N., Pennycook, G., Stolz, J. A., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2015). The brain in your pocket: Evidence that martphones are used to supplant thinking. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 473-480. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.02.029
Brooks, D. (2011). The social animal: The hidden sources of love, character and achievement. New York, USA: Random House.
Čapek, K. (1920). Rossumovi univerzální roboti [Rossum’s Universal Robots], Prague, Czech Republic: Aventinum.
Cave, S., & Dihal, K. (2018). Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots. Nature, 559(7715), 473-475. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05773-y
Cheever, N. A., Rosen, L. D., Carrier, L. M., & Chavez, A. (2014). Out of sight is not out of mind: The impact of restricting wireless mobile device use on anxiety levels among low, moderate and high users. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 290–297. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.002
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7-19. doi:10.1093/analys/58.1.7
Clark, A. (2008). Supersizing the mind. Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & The ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York, USA: Oxford University Press
Google. (n.d.). Publication database. Machine intelligence. Retrieved from https://ai.google/research/pubs?area=MachineIntelligence
Heidegger, M. (1986). Sein und zeit [Being and time]. Tu bingen, Germany: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
King, A. L. S., Valença, A. M., Silva, A. C. O., Baczynski, T., Carvalho, M. R., & Nardi, A. E. (2013). Nomophobia: Dependency on virtual environments or social phobia? Computers in Human Behavior, 29(1), 140–144. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2012.07.025
Karadag, E., Tosuntas, S. B., Erzen, E., Duru, P., Bostan, N., Mizrak, S., Culha, I., & Babadag, B. (2015). Determinants of phubbing, which is the sum of many virtual addictions: A structural equation model. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 4(2), 60-74. doi:10.1556/2006.4.2015.005
McLuhan, M. (2003). Understanding media. The extensions of man. Corte Madera, USA: Gingko Press.
Odgers, C. (2018). Smartphones are bad for some teens, not all. Nature 554(7693), 432-434. doi:10.1038/d41586-018-02109-8
Premack, D., & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and brain sciences, 1(4), 515–526. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00076512
Przybylski, A. K., & Weinstein, N. (2017). A large-scale test of the Goldilocks Hypothesis: Quantifying the relations between digital-screen use and the mental well-being of adolescents. Psychological Science, 28(2), 204 – 215. doi:10.1177/0956797616678438
Rabinowitz, N. C., Perbet, F., Song, H. F., Zhang, C., Eslami, S. M. A., & Botvinick, M. (2018). Machine theory of mind. Proceedings of the 35th International Conference on Machine Learning. Stockholm, Sweden. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.07740
Rotilă, V. (2016). The paradox of extended mind; from extended mind to extended consciousness. In A. Sandu, A. Frunză, T. Ciulei & L. Ghorghiu, Proceedings of the 7th Lumen International Conference Multidimensional Education & Professional Development. Ethical Values (pp. 451-459). Bologna, Italy: MEDIMOND
Roye, A., Jacobsen, T., & Schröger, E (2007). Personal significance is encoded automatically by the human brain: An event-related potential study with ringtones. European Journal of Neuroscience, 26(3), 784–90. doi:10.1111/j.1460-9568.2007.05685.x
Sample, I. (2018). Thousands of leading AI researchers sign pledge against killer robots. The Guardian, 2018, July 18. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/jul/18/thousands-ofscientists-pledge-not-to-help-build-killer-ai-robots
Smith, M. N. (2016). An iPhone is an extension of the mind. 2016, February 29. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/02/apple_and_the_fbi_think_iphones_are_safes_a_philosopher_explains_what_they.ht ml
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776–778. doi:10.1126/science.1207745
Thornton, B., Faires, A., Robbins, M., & Rollins, E. (2014). The mere presence of a cell phone may be distracting: Implications for attention and task performance. Social Psychology, 45(6), 479– 488. doi:10.1027/1864- 9335/a000216
Tran, D. (2016). Classifying nomophobia as smart-phone addiction disorder. UC Merced Undergraduate Research Journal, 9(1), 1-22. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0pq332g4
Ward, A. F., Duke, K., Gneezy, A., & Bos, M. W. (2017). Brain drain: The mere presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2(2), 140-154. doi.10.1086/691462
Whitaker, R. M., Chorley, M., & Allen, S. M. (2015). New frontiers for crowdsourcing: The extended mind. Proceedings of the 2015 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (p. 1635). doi:10.1109/HICSS.2015.197
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant this journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work, with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as an earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Postmodern Openings Journal has an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND
