[haswell]

While sitting with my iPad typing the other morning, something about the experience struck me in a way that it never had before.

I've been typing since the early 90s, and can type around 120WPM without looking or thinking about it, and it hit me that in a very real sense, the iPad (and other computing devices) are already an extension of me. I've invested the time to integrate this hardware into my brain via the keyboard interface, and once typing is automatic, the friction between brain and machine is very low. I can transmit information from brain to computer and back relatively quickly.

The thing about immersive tech is that we're already immersed in tech. The next generation of VR/AR promises to immerse us even more, but I think it's interesting to consider the idea that we're already immersed and don't always realize it.

When you start to look at the space around you as an extension of you (and I think there are good reasons to look at it this way - your immediate surroundings are in effect a projection/construct formulated by your brain, and the actions you take within that space modulate your average conscious experience), and when you start to look at the computing devices around you as part of that extension of you, it starts to raise really interesting questions like:

If I could implant a chip in my brain, and if people could control my brain with that chip, I would probably never allow it. But when that chip is outside of my brain in a device I keep in my pocket, why am I more willing to allow other entities to feed me stimuli?

I tend to agree with the broader idea that we need to be less immersed in tech, if for no other reason to reduce this kind of external control mechanism we've all hooked ourselves in to. And I don't think immersion is limited to the obvious developments like that next generation VR/AR headset. Immersion is already extremely high.

[foobarbecue]

When my computer glitches, e.g. if a key stops working on my keyboard or the mouse doesn't respond as expected, I sometimes experience a physical sense of of discomfort or disorientation that's not unlike dizzyness or the feeling of missing a step on stairs. I think it's because, as you describe in terms of immersion, my brain has extended its concept of my body through my typing fingers to the computer screen, building a proprioceptive loop which includes the computer.

We are already cyborgs.

[whatwhaaaaat]

I don’t buy this for even a minute. If my starter solenoid goes out on my old time Jeep I get the same feeling. (It’s happened a few times now). Does this mean the Jeep is now part of my body? Of course not.

It’s called being annoyed or caught off guard by external stimuli.

I think there is a large portion of people on this website who have not spent a day in years without their devices. That doesn’t mean their devices are integrated with their biology. Just that they have become dependent on things.

[feoren]

> Does this mean the Jeep is now part of my body? Of course not.

Why is that "of course not"? Is your arm part of your body? Your hair? A wig? A pacemaker? A well-fitted mechanical exoskeleton that you use without thinking about it? A poorly-fitted exoskeleton that you're still learning how to use? A Jeep? It's not as clear-cut as you make it sound. If the criteria is: well, I can't feel the Jeep -- well, you can't feel your liver either.

[filleduchaos]

> Is your arm part of your body?

Of course yes.

> Your hair?

Of course yes.

> A wig?

Of course not.

> A pacemaker?

Depends on who's asking and why.

> A well-fitted mechanical exoskeleton that you use without thinking about it? A poorly-fitted exoskeleton that you're still learning how to use?

Of course not to both of these things.

> A Jeep?

Of course not, and framing a Jeep and a human's liver as if the only possible point of difference between them is whether or not you can "feel" them is strange.

Half of us are fully capable of growing an entire other human being within our bodies, with a physical connection so tightly integrated that breaking it causes bleeding for weeks - and yet it's debatable whether even that counts as being a part of our bodies (especially medically speaking). Navel-gazing about the distinction between your body and a car not being clear-cut is simply inane to me in comparison.

[feoren]

So your definition seems to be that it's part of your body if it was built via instructions in your inherited DNA? So tattoos are not part of your body, nor are the gut bacteria you were mostly born with (or their ancestors) and without which you would quickly die. Phlegm that you spit on the street is still part of your body? Your tears? What about clonal colonies and parthenogenesis? Do identical twins have the same body?

The point is, your "of course" is based on some "obvious" definition that always gets fuzzy at the edges. Someone else's "of course" is based on some equally valid and obvious definition that gets fuzzy in different ways at different edges. Don't act like everyone who doesn't think exactly like you is just pointlessly navel gazing. The pointlessness is in trying to have a clear definition at all, which saying "of course" implicitly assumes.

> and framing a Jeep and a human's liver as if the only possible point of difference between them is whether or not you can "feel" them is strange.

Good thing that's nowhere near what I said. I said "I can feel it" is obviously not a good criterion.

[filleduchaos]

> So your definition seems to be that it's part of your body if it was built via instructions in your inherited DNA?

I think you'll find discussions significantly more straightforward if you don't make up the other person's side of the conversation for them and run off tilting at windmills.

What part of the comment where I e.g. said that whether or not a pacemaker is considered part of your body "depends on who's asking and why" gave you the impression that I define body parts as being built by you? What part of my comment mentioned genetics at all?

By the by, tattoos are a modification to a part of your body (your skin) but are very much not a part of it (your immune system is literally constantly trying to get rid of them). And your gut microbiota is very clearly considered to be a _separate_ organism from you, with its relationship described in symbiotic terms.

[photonthug]

Ever go rock-crawling for several hours off-road with that jeep? If the stakes are high because you're far from a paved road, 4x4 is also a very immersive experience. After a while the tires become like toes, and finding a good line with the vehicle starts to feel like stepping carefully around broken glass. You cringe almost in anticipation of personal pain when you take a bad line. There's surely some neurological basis for this, some kind of reverse of phantom-limb syndrome. Similarly that sense of "stumbling" when you're fighting with a glitching IDE or whatever is also very real, at least for me. If you haven't ever felt something along these lines, then you might not have found something yet that you're accustomed to fully focusing on.

[skydhash]

Even with playing a racing simulation, where it's a constant challenge to control the car, while the controller or the wheel become quickly abstracted away, the car itself become something your conscious inhabits. You react to stimuli (sound, visual, and vibration), not from your point of view, but from the car.

[kgwxd]

> not from your point of view, but from the car.

I think you just improved my Rocket League game by just accurately describing what probably should have been obvious, that's exactly what it feels like to be in the zone.

[jonahrd]

Wait but driving cars is pretty much the classic example of how learning to use tools can become an "extension" of our visual, motor, spacial perception.

It's why a new driver feels so uneasy while a seasoned driver can almost "feel" the amount of space their car takes up.

[foobarbecue]

Bad news, my friend: you're a Jeep cyborg. Basically something from a Transformers movie.

And yeah, I'm stretching the argument a bit -- of course at least on a conscious level there's a boundary at my fingertips where I know that my body ends by the more generally accepted definition of "me".

[blocko]

I'll get this occasionally when I've scrolled to the end of an article without realizing, attempt to scroll further a few seconds later, and then have my eyes/vision caught off guard by the absence of movement. Missing a stairstep was a good example--there's a similar moment of "frozen time" in both cases

[filiph]

I didn't want to bore the reader with various definitions of immersion but you're raising a very good point. Apart from the "immersion for entertainment" that I'm mostly talking about, there's also the "flow" and the "tech as augmentation". I have obviously no problem with people being more productive through technology. What I have issue with is the (unwitting) funneling of the world's talent and resources into tech that makes us immersed in non-existent worlds just for the sake of entertainment.

[huijzer]

I think Buffett has a very great counter to this which he learned from his father: inner scorecard. By judging yourself on your inner checklist, you’re less likely to be pulled into the latest fads. Your goal is follow your own path instead of the path that happens to be fashionable that day.

[eddd-ddde]

That we have arms and legs that we can control is nothing but an accident, a very complex accident but still.

Our eyes and ears are no different in that sense, only they're mostly input rather than output.

Input is just as dangerous in our bodies as it is in some backend that connects to a database, marketing makes use of these vulnerabilities to control us in some way or another.

I don't think people argue we should cover over ears while walking outside out of fear we get hijacked from things we could hear. In the same way, I don't think there's an issue with immersive technology, one just has to learn to treat it as more external input that needs to be validated and sanitized.

[feoren]

> If I could implant a chip in my brain, and if people could control my brain with that chip, I would probably never allow it. But when that chip is outside of my brain in a device I keep in my pocket, why am I more willing to allow other entities to feed me stimuli?

This definition of "feeding you stimuli" seems extremely broad to me. Are you "allowing other entities to feed you stimuli" when you listen to the radio? When you see signs and billboards on the highway? When you are having a conversation? How could you live your life without allowing other entities to feed you stimuli? How are these examples different from what your phone is doing? (And don't say "notifications": you have far more control over which notifications you receive than which billboards you see.)

If I could implant a chip in my brain that allowed me to tune into any radio station I wanted and listen to it in my brain, I'd probably do that, assuming it's safe and actually under my control. I'm not seeing the dichotomy here.

[haswell]

> This definition of "feeding you stimuli" seems extremely broad to me.

To rein this in a bit, here's how I'm defining this: regularly "choosing" to interact with a library of content and experiences that are all engineered to evoke certain emotional responses from me as the user and get me to buy more things or change my beliefs. I put choosing in quotes because once a habit loop is established, the behavior is indistinguishable from an addiction and the choice is similar to the one made by a gambler sitting at a slot machine.

Listening to the radio, watching TV and talking to a friend all provide external stimuli. But clearly there are aspects of each of these interactions that makes them unique.

When I'm talking to my friend, I usually don't have to wonder if the things they're saying are only meant to influence my purchasing decisions, or change how I see a political candidate, or support a particular world view, etc. Some friends are good influences. Some bad. If you choose to hang around the stoner who always wears you down and gets you to smoke a joint, that particular friend might not be a good influence.

> How could you live your life without allowing other entities to feed you stimuli?

I'm not suggesting that this is possible or even desired. I'm suggesting that there are certain sources of stimuli that we deem unacceptable that are strikingly similar to stimuli that we deem acceptable and that it's not clear why we categorize them so differently.

In other words: If you would say "hell no" to a physically connected chip that feeds your brain ads for products you don't need every hour, why would you not say "hell no" to a device that could do the same thing without even needing a physically connected chip? (I'm saying this as a person who carries one of those devices, so I'm not a Luddite or claiming to have avoided anything).

> How are these examples different from what your phone is doing?

There are a myriad of differences, but I think they boil down to these key things: Ubiquity, Tracking and Personalization.

Billboards (which are ugly and often the source of controversy in communities) do not know who you are, and they are not in your pocket every minute of the day. They don't insert themselves into the middle of your interactions with friends, or follow you home.

> And don't say "notifications": you have far more control over which notifications you receive than which billboards you see.

I disagree with the premise of this objection, but notifications are only a small part of this. Most people don't turn notifications off, and app makes know this. There is a finite number of billboards you can fit on any given stretch of road, and there is an infinite number of notifications you can be subject to regardless of where you are on any given day.

Yes, you can disable notifications, and I think this is one of the simplest things people can do to interrupt the addiction loop. But many of the most popular apps carefully construct notifications that get you into the app for plausible reasons (comments on your post!) so they can then feed you the algorithmic payload.

> If I could implant a chip in my brain that allowed me to tune into any radio station I wanted and listen to it in my brain, I'd probably do that, assuming it's safe and actually under my control. I'm not seeing the dichotomy here.

I think that "assuming it's safe and actually under my control" is exactly where the radio and social media examples diverge. The point is that much of the content on social media is not safe, and you have less and less choice about what you actually see. With radio, you probably wouldn't choose to listen to the channel that airs Rush Limbaugh 24/7. With algorithmic feeds, you don't really get to choose what you see.

[0xfffafaCrash]

For anyone more interested in this general topic, in philosophy of mind, this is referred to as “the extended mind” using the terminology of Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their famous 1998 paper of the same name.

[em-bee]

that's a great point. i guess i can say the same about how i interact with my computer, but for me there is a different quality to it. while the computer and phone and various messaging apps or forums like hackernews are often my only social interaction, so i spend a lot of time on that in search for someone to connect to, i also have all notifications off on all devices, and i expressly do not allow other entities to feed me stimuli when they deem it fit, to the point that you can't even call me because i won't hear the phone ring. i want to be in control.

there is of course a balance to it. not getting notifications means i spend more time checking for new messages than i would if notifications were on, but at the same time i also forget to check for messages when i am actually focused on something, which i think is the more important aspect of it.

so i am immersed with my tools only as an extension of my self, controlling the tools to do what i want them to do without giving up any of that control to anyone else. (at least so i like to think)

[pitdicker]

If wish we could merge this comment with the thread where people are defending Youtubes right to show ads. I am so glad there is technology available to choose what I want to read and see without being forced too much other content.

[ryandv]

One day I want to expand on the idea that our digital avatars, our images and representations of ourselves, become an extension of our own self-concept, in the same way our keyboard becomes an extension of our hands and our body. Our social media profiles, our timelines, photos, and digital content, become part of our selves, and we begin to identify with these time capsules we've created of ourselves, to the point where we _are_ the person in the photo, we _are_ that person on Facebook.

It's a fundamentally backwards-facing view of the self that relies on historical or past depictions of an individual in order to define their current self-concept. It implies an immutability, a static, unchanging quality to the person, since after all - there "you" are, or at least all your photos and your memorabilia, your self-depictions and simulacra, committed to and preserved in the permanent record of the cloud. It's also one that emphasizes the importance of external markers and signals of identity - only those that can be extraverted - to the detriment of the inner life of the psyche, the private life of the mind which is not so readily available for examination or expression.

This way of looking of ourselves through a digital black mirror continues to uphold the illusion of permanence; our self is like a river, and we never step in the same one twice - unless we freeze the river (in time) and post it to Instagram.

Not to mention all the vanity and superficiality of Photoshop, filters, r/instagramreality, etc etc... points which have all been discussed ad nauseam.

Moreover there is the slow death of the literary personality - of one who, in times where media and bandwidth were not of sufficient capacity to generate and retain all these audiovisual representations of our selves, was primarily known through their words and their writing. This is a fundamentally different way of trying to understand one's character that requires much more participation on the audience's behalf to fill in the gaps - the gaps that can't be immediately filled in with high definition video. It becomes harder for one to be identified through their words, and more and more preferable to identify someone by what they look or sound like; another step in the long, slow march away from literacy and to other forms of information exchange.

In this regard I'm reminded of David Foster Wallace uncut television interview [0], which I found incredibly fascinating - here was one of the most articulate men in society, celebrated for his literary works, appearing awkwardly and shyly on camera, sometimes meandering off on tangents in the discussion, sometimes "pontificating" on the interviewer's questions - how does DFW's audiovisual representation compare to his literary output?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGLzWdT7vGc