Cognitive & Physical Technologies: The Shift
For the first time in human history we are combining cognitive & physical technologies. This is a profound shift.
Sophia finally found the right sized socket wrench amidst her tools and leaned in to remove the panel. She whispered to her Augmented Reality (AR) glasses to move to the next step of the repair, overlaying the schematics and indicating the next step in the process. She was determined to fix the heat pump herself rather than call a technician. So far, so good and she was rather pleased with herself.
For the first time in human history, we are at the early stages of bringing together in interesting ways both cognitive and physical technologies in ways that will have profound implications for the human condition. These ways will impact how we perceive ourselves as humans, how we learn, work, shape our societies and cultures. It is combining these technologies
Cognitive and Physical Technologies
Our earliest cognitive technology is language, initially as sounds, like grunts and the use of physical movements and facial expressions combined with language. We still do this with over 90% of how we communicate with one another being non-verbal. It’s part of the reason we get “zoom fatigue” from all day video meetings.
Eventually we evolved writing on stones, wood, papyrus then paper. Then along came the printing press and books, which can be considered as cognitive technologies. Today, we have digital tools, such as our smartphones. They allow us to offload some or much of our cognitive load, such as accessing and storing vast amounts of information. Essentially allowing us to exceed the natural limits of our physical capabilities.
Physical technologies augment our bodily capabilities, enabling us to improve our living condition. The first stone tools enabled us to hunt more successfully and cut a nice rib-eye steak from a mastodon we’d just hunted. And make clothing to stay warm during the ice age.
Advancing By Combining
Being able to physically record our thoughts enabled us to share our knowledge and ideas across larger parts of society. While it’s romantic to think that our first real inscribing of writing for knowledge was stories and poems, sadly, it was actually for record keeping and accounting of things like debts owed and how much grain was in the warehouse. Accountants it seems, may be the second oldest profession!
Physical technologies tend to require bodily interaction. We need to focus to use them and they require more precise engagement. Cognitive technologies, interface directly with our thought processes and senses, sometimes in ways that feel more “natural” to us.
When we combine physical and cognitive technologies, our societies tend to advance more rapidly and we begin to explore new ideas and innovate in more interesting ways.
While physical technologies have enabled us to expand our civilizations, cognitive technologies tend to alter our social structures, patterns of communication and, perhaps more significantly, our reality. We see this today with the effects of social media and the internet as we create, share and imagine new realities. In good and bad, even dangerous, ways.
Cognitive technologies too are capable of being much more customized, faster, in more individualistic ways. Such as the ability to customize software with profiles and colours. While physical technologies can be customised, it is often more expensive and takes longer, thus putting limitations on customisation.
Moving Forward
As we continue to find new ways of combining physical and cognitive technologies, we are likely to see new ways in which we see ourselves and what it means to be human. Today AR and Virtual Reality, combined with various Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like Machine Learning and Generative AI, brain computer interfaces, even artificial limbs and genetic engineering are just at their opening phases.
In my next article I will dive a little deeper into some of the changes ahead from a cultural point of view. From the reshaping of our social interactions, to the impacts on cultural norms, customs and behaviours as our cultures become ever more intertwined. We may see entirely new forms of cultural expression from art and music to economic and political systems.
These changes, like all such changes with regard to technology and being human, are never easy. As always, the ultimate arbiter of all technologies is culture. And with so many cultures, technologies never have advanced in a nice linear pattern. We tend to think agriculture happened overnight, but it took thousands of years with some cultures trying, rejecting it and only coming back to it hundreds or thousands of years later.
Technology is so deeply intertwined with the very meaning of being human and our survival as a species. Perhaps this time, we are learning faster, how to better leverage technology? Now there’s a debate for the ages!