Google glasses – the sociology of sight

One day I had a conversation with myself. Nothing crazy, just the usual pondering between different ideas and trying to go through things in a sort of a semi-dialogue way. If you have been following the blog, you may have noticed that lately I have began reading about cognitive psychology and cognitive science. I am going through several books at the same time just to get as much information in my head as I can.

The conversation between I and I took an unexpected turn when I suddenly remembered Google’s awesome Glass Project. My honest opinion as a tech enthusiast and an entrepreneur is that Google is going to hit gold if the final product will be even half than what was promised. Yes, the world is about to change with these goggles, no question about it. Just look at the Youtube commercial and you will never hold a pair of glasses the same way again.

But hold on, hold on… what exactly is being promised here and at what price? It was this question I and I began thinking, not arguing, about.

In the video we see the Glasses deliver emails, SMS-messages and social media updates as well as maps and other ‘augmented’ reality stuff to the wearer. So, you don’t have to reach in your pocket and look at your cell phone. What does that awkward though mean?

Well, since the beginning of human civilization we have had at least three ways of looking at things. The first is the animal stare of ‘fight, flight or copulate’. That is the essence of our animal side. The second is the mythical gaze when we look at the stars or follow a priest preforming whatever ritual before the tribe. And the third is the theatre view we have when we look at the social world in general.

All these ways of looking have different personal and social meanings. The animal stare helps us orientate to our surroundings and to perform tasks ‘at hand’. This animal stare is very much connected to the rest of our senses and our bodies in general. It is the way we humans touch to world.

The mythical gaze is connected to our mental abilities to imagine and find meanings in pictures and the world we live in. This gaze may be difficult to describe in words and it has a lot to do with how we feel about things.

The theatre view is the way we gather information about more complex social performances. This could actually be a theatre play or newspaper we read now and then. It gives us information on the world in general.

Now, these typifications are my own and they just sprang to mind so there is no science behind here.

If we take these three different ways of seeing and combine them to our very much visual culture, some thoughts come to mind.

We consume visual information. We no longer have things in our real hands and the ‘concrete’ stuff we need to process in order to get ‘real’ things done is very much visual and abstract. We not only need new technical skills but also new ways to understand information. If you – like most of us – feel that you are bombarded with emails, Facebook ‘likes’ and such, you probably have sometimes felt a bit sick because of the overflow of ‘information technology’.

Now, I and I were discussing this particular situation and thinking about the google glasses. I love the idea but I fear there is a certain level of pain coming along with them. By this I mean that we need to immerse ourselves even more with digital streams and abstract meanings with brains that are best apt to process information in the theree previously mentioned ways.

The brain is a physical device so it exists in space and time. The animal stare is for the very fast information concerning questions ilke where, how and when. The mythical stare is slow, perhaps closer to meditation and the theatre view is best understood as an ability to understand social roles and such (for instance, reading a newspaper article gives us a ‘story’ we understand).

The Google glasses – and similar products – destroy all this unless the designers are taking steps to offer the ‘augmented reality’ in an old fashion way.

The glasses is a major step because with them the ‘virtual’ is ever present. The younger generations will be able to grow new neuron links in order to have their brains wiring altered (yes, I believe that will happen) and they will have very different ways of processing information. That is already happening with our technology today.

Older brains are harder to rewire. Just look at how people who have never used a computer mouse has enormous difficulties in getting the simples click ‘click’. Now, imagine the mouse as a link to a virtual world where people who can perform this simple task have unique access to a whole new social world.

We are about to cross an interesting threshold. Once our brains begin to ‘evolve’ with new ways of perception, the following generations may go even further with the human-machine interface thing. I believe – and I have no scientific evidence in support of this – that the hacking of our brain and social relations has started a few decades back and the next decades will very much be about finding out our human restrictions and how to go beyond – and some of us will want to.

The brain and I

Some of these posts have very little to do with my PhD process, so I’ll categorize this under “General interest”. In case you are wondering, I am actually starting to put together the early-draft-try-out-version of the beginning of my article on cognitive enhancement the concept of technology therein.

But now, this is all about me and my brain. Don’t you feel a bit sic or at least odd when you think about the thing inside your skull? Most of us know we find “neurons” there and that these neurons have a lot to do with our lives. As I am now reading a lot about the brain in general and cognitive research, there are some newbie questions I have had difficulties with.

First, in ordinary speech we tend to think of the brain as “our brain”. Well, it resides in our head, but this seems to be a more fundamental ownership. The brain is responsible for all kinds of things that put together things we call “I”, “Self” or “personality”. But, does this mean that the “I” is something determined in the brain itself? Or more precisely, is the brain “fixed” in creating the this one unique personality we call the “I”. If we look at how perception works, it seems that the brain takes light signals from the retina and processes (?) them into a picture, perspective and ultimately meaning.

I am not trying to say that we don’t have a personality of our own or deny subjectivity but I am saying that perhaps our conception of the brain is too anthropocentric. As the brain developed in evolution, it started out by just processing light signals with sensitive cells. Later this grew and grew and the brain adapted. The brain would seem to be a passive organ that adapts over time. So, it still is an adaptive organ and it should be viewed not as “my brain” but “just a brain”.

I believe – and since I have no idea how the brain works, this is a leap of faith – that the brain works pretty much in darkness. Think about our ability to see and orient to the world? We know it is 3d but in the brain process I doubt there is a system for producing the one and the only human way of looking at the world in 3d. The brain does not sense dimensions, it just passes information in order to make the body move in space and time. There is no homunculus in our brain working things out for us.

So, at least in ordinary talk, there seems to be two brain biases in thinking. One is that the brain as an organ was some how deemed to create just this unique personality we call “I”. Two, that the brain somehow is specialized (or determined) to produce a “human experience of reality”.

The brain as just an organ -view opens up the debate on more complex cognitive processes. Since the brain now would be seen as “just a brain” performing a complex function in orientating to the world, the higher brain functions like language can possibly be created outside of the brain. If we think about the construction of the ‘self’, it can be imagined that all though the brain is a necceccry preconception for the self, it may not be an enough to produce a human personality.

For this we need consciousness. The difficult line with social sciences and cognitive conceptions of humanity lie – in my opinion – right here. Consciousness is a complex feature of the brain and still quite a mystery. To me it seems obvious that consciousness is the link between the social and the individual. By this I don’t mean a reductionist view. Quite the opposite.

As long as the brain remains unchanged (we assume no evolution in this example), it is connected to reality through it’s senses and by reality itself. This means that there is a possibility of social forces to manifest in “us”. The consciousness can be modeled by the environment and one can say that there can be a collective consciousness if many people share similar identities – like with institutions. But, at the same time they are individuals functioning with the world – they are not determined, at least in a strong sense.

Now let’s make some evolutionary (and thin) assumptions about technology (defined very broadly as ‘stuff we use’). Let’s assume that the interaction with technology can affect the way consciousness is created but let’s go further. If the eyesight affected how the entire brain adapted, let’s assume the process to function with other ways of ‘seeing’ as well.

Now we have the brain as an organ connected with say, a mind-machine-interface. The functioning of these systems are based on the fact that the brain is flexible and malleable. If you learn to use your mouse by just thinking about it (making certain areas of your brain active and therefore growing new neuron connections), you will affect the way your brain works. Does it affect you? Maybe. Let’s assume that a similar link is created with Wikipedia. There would be a view in your retina and you could at any time find information through there. And – to make this example nasty – you would be implanted with this device when you are born.

My assumption? That the your brain would develop into a very different brain because there would be a new way of seeing. Not just in 3d of the real world, but the “3d” of the information stream. It is possible that the process of getting information to your retina would be automated over the years you grow and that would have a huge impact on mundane living. You would simply know more or at least faster.

We can imagine several ways this could effect social relations. This would mean that the “I”, or the consciousness, is adapted to a different social, cultural, economic and even political reality than people without this simple mind hack.

So, in my opinion, the future of human-technology-interface has loads of questions about personality, interaction and neuron functions to answer. I am convinced that some “techno-evolutionary” events will take place in the future.

Focusing the research

Some posts back I decided to focus on the concept of enhancement and what it means for a social actor. Back then I viewed enhancement as an attribute that alters the social relations in a given group or societal context. I still consider this a starting point but then I began looking for materials to use as my research data.

First I went through some transhumanist related literature that I had ordered form a bookstore. Then I perused through some blogs and websites contacted with transhumanism and tried to get some big pile of material to start analyzing. I’m not going to go in to detail how this analysis going to be done since I myself have not really decided.

Then I started wondering, that perhaps I need even a more focused concept than just ‘enhancement’. It is obvious when reading transhuman texts that enhancement is a marker for a variety of different methods and views on ‘human development’. In short, I decided to focus on some small piece of discussion.

Along came cognitive psychology and cognitive science in general. After some thinking I decided to try out ‘cognitive enhancement’ as my more focused area of analysis.

Cognitive enhancement has to do with ‘brain development’. So, the key focus in such actions is the human brain or cognition. It is argued, that enhancing the brain, the effects are felt in a personal human life and in society in general. Also, cognitive enhancement is not that utopian technology so there is a lot of ‘mainstream’ information about it.

And there is even a deeper point here. Since the crude argument goes that if the brain functionality is enhanced, the person is also enhanced. This creates a connection between the brain and the social. This poses a lot of questions but it also gives me an idea how the ‘actor’ could be defined in a brain centered manner.

Have no fear, I am not giving up on the core assumptions about constructivism or cultural phenomena in general, but I am trying to understand how transhumanism defines a person, technology, enhancement and the effects on the social cognitive enhancement has.