I was particularly interested in a small article in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine, which outlined how the human brain understands tools as part of our physical body.
When we brush our teeth, for instance, the brain conceives of our limb being slightly longer, which is how we map the information about where the end of our brush is, so that we don’t knock our teeth out in the process.
It makes sense, of course, but this is, theoretically, the first instance of a scientific underpinning for McLuhan’s now 30+ year old assertion that media are extensions of ourselves. And in altering the media forms (ie: the tools we use) we thereby alter ourselves and the ways in which we understand our relationship to the world around us.
Cars are an interesting case in point. As we become familiar with driving and the brain is able to map the car onto our physical conception of our place in physical space, we actually have a sense of our width, velocity and proximity as if the car was a part of ourselves.
“I can squeeze through that gap” is a really good example of that sort of physical sense that goes beyond merely visual estimation, but is a sense of our own boundaries, extended through the medium of a tool. I can sense where I stop and you begin.
It’s not because I can see all of the edges of our respective vehicles, but because my brain has a sense of my own total width. The car is part of me.
But if a physical extension of ourselves is mapped in the brain as being part of our physical being, then it’s not such a stretch to imagine (or even, as I plan to do, assert) that psychological extensions of ourselves are similarly mapped in the brain as being part of our conceptual being.
That is to say – our communicative media are extensions of ourselves. How we use our technologies and which technologies we use inscribe our sense of self – our personhood – and where the boundaries of that lie.
Digital and internet technologies extend us in almost unimaginable ways.
As McLuhan pointed out, a good definition of God is a being with its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere. I don’t believe in God (nor in the property of God-ness, for that matter) – but I do think its interesting to note that this is also a pretty good definition of ourselves when we’re online.