Technology & Our Primitive Brains
The role some of our primitive human brain aspects play in our digital lives.
Maria was cozied up on the couch in her flatI d, it was late at night and her thumb moved almost mindlessly as she swiped downward, refresh, refresh, refresh, checking notices, watching. A few floors below, Jake was doing the same on TikTok. Millions were doing the same around the world. What they didn’t realise was they were doing something we humans have been doing for millennia; sitting around a campfire telling stories. We’ve just traded the fire for small glass screens.
Part of the reason that people only use Virtual Reality (VR) headsets for short periods of time is that our brains still scan our environment for threats and opportunities. Such as scanning the savannah for something that would want to eat us for lunch. This is our limbic system at work.
Our brains are made of these layered evolutionary solutions we’ve evolved through culture and biology over thousands of years, well, a few hundred thousand years. Neuroscientist Paul MacLean calls it the “triune brain” via the limbic system. Which hasn’t changed much over the past 200,000 or so years. Yet we’re now interfacing and interacting with technologies that run on 18 month cycles! This is where a lot of friction with some technologies comes into play.
When we gathered around fires, the information (stories) we shared, had to be compelling and of enough value to hold our attention in short bursts between our survival priorities.
Today, UX designers and strategists today apply this approach through what are called “social architectures”, working with what we know about our ancient habits and behaviours to create software and technology products. Similar to how computer scientists use algorithms to manipulate our digital behaviours and actions.
When we’re hitting that refresh button or swiping, we are performing a sort of divinational ritual, hoping for new connection, information or meaning. These sort of reinforcement behaviours or rituals reflect our ancient foraging patters. Sometimes we find berries, sometimes we don’t, but we keep searching anyway.
Posting selfies, family pictures on a trip or a meal we’re about to eat are performative social acts to signal status within our close groups and more widely. They are a sort of social rite of passage as well. When we feel anxiety about our online presence it is our primitive brains understanding the social stakes in establishing tribal belonging.
When we think about information architecture, the campfire, hundreds of thousands of years later remains our most successful one. Consider the properties of the campfire;
Circular gathering (360-degree participation vs. hierarchical broadcasting)
Shared focal point (collective attention on central content)
Gradual revelation (stories unfold over time, building suspense)
Multi-sensory engagement (warmth, light, sound, even smell)
Social proximity (you can read micro-expressions, gauge group dynamics)
When digital tools such as apps or mobile devices approximate a campfire the most, they tend to be successful. When they ignore these aspects, they often fail. TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram reels are so successful because they create and leverage these aspects.
Another aspect of why VR and AR haven’t achieved mass market adoption is because they’ve not solved for the presence problem by making digital spaces feel as socially real as sitting around a campfire.
One of the reasons fitness communities through digital channels are so effective is that they take on elements of tribalism. Peloton, CrossFit and similar ones create these artificial tribes with initiation rituals, a shared language and status hierarchies that reflect our ancient clan structures.
Mindfulness apps mirror our primitive brain’s need for being present in the moment and deeply aware of our surroundings in a way that sets our mind at ease over threat anxieties.
We are evolving alongside these tools, they shape us and then we shape them. Smartphones are an example in what philosopher Andy Clark called the “extended mind” theory, with phones extensions of our cognitive abilities. Which will become more so as we leverage Artificial Intelligence tools for cognitive offloading. The challenge for our brains though, is that this creates a form of extended stress as we’re perpetually adapting. Something we used to have the time and space to do.
So we tend to think we’re doing new and cool things with these digital tools, but we’re doing what we’ve done for hundreds of thousands of years. Technologies have always played a part in our lives and evolution and always will. Just as we are social creatures so are we technological creatures. The challenge is can our brains adapt fast enough? What is the cost?
We have always adapted before and adaptation is a superpower for humans. We are far better at than any animal. The process or methodology we use to achieve this is culture. Which, as I often say, is why culture is the ultimate arbiter of technology. Lizard brain be damned.