12 ms·

An iPhone Is an Extension of the Mind

68 points by chewymouse 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
SigmundA 11y ago
I think this is a good philosophical debate that needs to be explored, however I am not sure how I see the safe argument as a poor analog. On one hand the article proposes that writing something down on paper is an extension of the mind, yet does not even mention the obvious situation that must occur on a regular basis of confidential papers in a safe. These are admissible correct? I still am searching for something new about smartphone vs older technology such as safes and paper, which must have hundreds of years of legal precedent to reference. Even the idea that the safe destroys it's contents if tampered with is not new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex).
citizensixteen 11y ago
>The FBI isn’t asking to access an uncrackable safe. It wants to compromise the boundaries of the self. This article brings up the concept of cognitive liberty. The more we rely on technology and AI the more this may become a concern. "Cognitive liberty, or the "right to mental self-determination", is the freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes, cognition, and consciousness. It has been argued to be both an extension of, and the principle underlying, the right to freedom of thought. Though a relatively recently defined concept, many theorists see cognitive liberty as being of increasing importance as technological advances in neuroscience allow for an ever-expanding ability to directly influence consciousness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty
- rogersmith 11y ago
  "the freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes, cognition, and consciousness." if this is a real thing, most of what passes for "education" these days tramples this right extensively.
mbrock 11y ago
McLuhan: > With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard published The Concept of Dread.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- drdeca 11y ago
  Is "the concept of dread" the same work as "the concept of anxiety" with a different translation of the title, or are they different works?
  - mbrock 11y ago
    Yeah, different translations. The Danish is "angest" or "angst." As a native Swedish speaker, I find the common identification of "anxiety" and "ångest" a little strange, because of the strong existential connotations of the latter word... But it's interesting how McLuhan insinuates a connection between angst in the existential sense and this spatial displacement of the nervous system. By the way, the quote is from his essay "The Agenbite of Outwit". http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_...
diskcat 11y ago
A book is also an extension of the mind.
- melling 11y ago
  Paper notebooks might be. http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/inside-leonardo-s-notebook.html http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/inside-leona... The cell phone, etc will be a much bigger extension. However, we still need better ways to input, organize and access the information. Handwritten notes, voice memos, pictures, drawings, unstructured and structured data, etc. Cortana/Siri with hand tracking ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 ) and a HoloLens will allow people to organize everything in creative ways.
amelius 11y ago
s/iPhone/smartphone/g
jsprogrammer 11y ago
>If that is the sole, correct framing of the issue, then society faces a simple question of how to interpret existing statutes in light of constitutional constraints. It is not the sole framing, nor is it correct. The order is not to weaken the encryption scheme, but to override the kill switch, on a specific phone, that will disable the device if too many incorrect login attempts are made.
- zaroth 11y ago
  The core security of any password based encryption is the means to slow or prevent brute force attacks on the password. Weakening the PBKDF to make brute forcing possible is exactly the definition of weakening the scheme. There are at least 9 phones they want this on today, and other sources have "hundreds" more. So you can say they want to do this on "any specific" phone, but I hope we're well past debating this as if we're talking about a single phone ever. I couldn't be happier with yesterday's ruling denying the government motion to compel using AWA in a similar case. I think we can see the forest for the trees in these case and should have an honest debate about how much police should be able to control the software on our devices, without trying to skirt the issue by tying it to a particularly haneous crime. I'm convinced and I believe it's well understood and settled that if AWA works the way the Fed wants in a specific case, it works in every single investigation, regardless of the brand of device or type of software. Magistrate Judge Orenstein certainly saw it that way.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    An encryption scheme should not be weakenable after the physical medium has been compromised. An encryption scheme is purely a feature of the data, not of the device. An encryption scheme should only be susceptible to brute force attacks and Apple is not being asked to perform a brute force attack, but rather, to deactivate their kill switch. If you read the order, the software to deactivate the kill switch is only supposed to work with one particular iPhone and Apple is under no obligation to deliver that software to anyone; they are only required to provide access to the device without fear of the kill switch.
Zikes 11y ago
How many old laws do we now lament for their lack of foresight or for having been written in a time well before technology like today's could have even been imagined? Here we have the opportunity to do the opposite. It is inevitable, given the trends in technology, that we will someday be able to directly integrate computing devices into our minds in some way. Perhaps we would use them to store memories themselves, or offload the processing of difficult thoughts or problems. It's hard to say, but if you can imagine controlling a smartphone or computer with only your mind then it's not too hard to imagine all the other potential uses. We have the opportunity to get it right, here and now. Let's not waste it.
sandworm101 11y ago
>> The FBI isn’t asking to access an uncrackable safe. It wants to compromise the boundaries of the self. No. These are phones, not implants. The FBI wants to crack encryption, not skulls. Anyone who equates access to phones with scifi mind scanning needs perspective. If you find your meat self indistinguishable from your "networked self" then you need to get out of the matrix once and a while. Some of us, I think most of us, still have internal and interpersonal lives that are not shared with our devices. >> There is no reason to allow corporate access to our minds while vigorously denying state access. Yes there is. A corporation doesn't have access to weaponized drones (at least not yet;). A corporation doesn't want to kill its customers. It wants them happy and spending. On the other hand, governments often want and do kill. A government does not necessarily want its people happy. Therefore, data in the hands of corporations is a very different scenario than data in the hand of government. They should not be equated.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > A corporation doesn't have access to weaponized drones (at least not yet;). Wrong. There are corporate weaponized drones already, and lobbying in favor of private (individual and corporate) armed drones in the US. [0][1] > A corporation doesn't want to kill its customers. Competitors, protestors, and disaffected workers, OTOH... [0] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29182/the-skunk-drone-is-coming/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29182/the-skunk-d... [1] http://executivelp.com/laws-regulations/why-tennessee-should-not-ban-weaponized-drones/ http://executivelp.com/laws-regulations/why-tennessee-should...
- sithadmin 11y ago
  >Some of us, I think most of us, still have internal and interpersonal lives that are not shared with our devices. I'm having difficulty thinking of a single part of my life that isn't shared with my devices. My smartphone can be used to discover where I am at any given time, and where I probably was at any given time. Reasonable guesses about my state of mind and stream of thoughts could be constructed from my search history on the device. It can access any and all of my personal documents, photos, and financial information. It provides access to a matrix of nearly all of my social and professional contacts, and a fair bit of history regarding my current and historical interactions with them. It provides access to entry and exit logs for the doors and windows in my home, recordings of all persons approaching or entering its doors, and even logs about which lights I turn on and when. Most noteworthy is that the information above is almost certainly of higher quality and breadth than anything law enforcement previously (in a pre-digital age) could have assembled on their own.
wahsd 11y ago
There we go! I've been waiting about at least 5 years for someone to write this up. It needs to be carried a little further and the current circumstances will determine what the future holds, but I'm just glad this has been put out. It will become interesting once the "mind reading" technologies become more accurate though. What happens when you can read someone's mind in passing to, e.g., call their pin that has been established as protected under the Constitution. Look for wire mesh balaclava fashions in the future.
eternalban 11y ago
I see these poor young zombies in the street stupefied by their 'smart' digital pacifiers and thank heavens I quickly weaned myself off and back to using just a plain jane phone.
- mbrock 11y ago
  What makes you think they're "zombies" or "stupefied"?
  - danharaj 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight
  - eternalban 11y ago
    Daily slaloms around situationally unaware/uncaring moving bodies in street crossings, subway egress zones, ... Remember kids, this flower of your youth is precious precious precious. Do not waste it glued to a screen.
    - mbrock 11y ago
      They're probably just talking with their friends. How is that more of a waste of youth than going around staring at the pavement? If they were zombies they wouldn't be bumping accidentally into you on the sidewalk. They'd be trying to eat your flesh or something.
    - Zikes 11y ago
      Darn kids these days, with their automocars and compuwhatsits. It's a darn shame they'll never know real life, shoveling horse dung and plowing the fields, like humans were meant to live.
rqebmm 11y ago
According to the author communication of information to a 3rd party, either another person, or a smartphone, or a pad of paper, is all an "extension of the mind". This premise equivocates the contents of a device, to the contents of a computer to a persons spoken and written word. To me this all makes sense that a repository of information that was communicated from one's mind can be considered an "extension" of it. He then posits the money question "How much of ourselves should we give over to the state?" However, it's a huge leap to treat this like a new issue. Humans have been storing mental processes with 3rd parties since the literal beginning of history, and storing them with non-human parties since literally the first written word. This necessarily existed before the "state" in any sense (as a state requires laws, which have to be somehow commuincated.) This means that this debate has been ongoing since literally the beginning of governments. How/why/when/where the state handles spoken conversations vs written records vs computer records are concepts that have been fairly well established in both US and international law. People certainly hold varying viewpoints, but to contextualize that debate as new because of recent technological advances or the latest news seems clickbaity.
Chefkoochooloo 11y ago
I find the argument that the phone is an "extension of the mind" to be really interesting. If you think about it, doesn't our phone track our behaviors, suggest words when texting, etc.? Our phones are with us almost every single second of the day and we use these phones and store massive amounts of private and personal data and should we be forced to give over that data when forced to? I do not know the answer to this but this opens up the doors for conversations we need to have in such a fast-paced technology world.

68 points by chewymouse 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

I think this is a good philosophical debate that needs to be explored, however I am not sure how I see the safe argument as a poor analog. On one hand the article proposes that writing something down on paper is an extension of the mind, yet does not even mention the obvious situation that must occur on a regular basis of confidential papers in a safe. These are admissible correct? I still am searching for something new about smartphone vs older technology such as safes and paper, which must have hundreds of years of legal precedent to reference. Even the idea that the safe destroys it's contents if tampered with is not new (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptex).

citizensixteen 11y ago

>The FBI isn’t asking to access an uncrackable safe. It wants to compromise the boundaries of the self. This article brings up the concept of cognitive liberty. The more we rely on technology and AI the more this may become a concern. "Cognitive liberty, or the "right to mental self-determination", is the freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes, cognition, and consciousness. It has been argued to be both an extension of, and the principle underlying, the right to freedom of thought. Though a relatively recently defined concept, many theorists see cognitive liberty as being of increasing importance as technological advances in neuroscience allow for an ever-expanding ability to directly influence consciousness." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_liberty

rogersmith 11y ago
"the freedom of an individual to control his or her own mental processes, cognition, and consciousness." if this is a real thing, most of what passes for "education" these days tramples this right extensively.

mbrock 11y ago

McLuhan: > With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his skull inside and his brain outside. We have become peculiarly vulnerable. The year of the establishment of the commercial telegraph in America, 1844, was also the year Kierkegaard published The Concept of Dread.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
drdeca 11y ago
Is "the concept of dread" the same work as "the concept of anxiety" with a different translation of the title, or are they different works?
- mbrock 11y ago
  Yeah, different translations. The Danish is "angest" or "angst." As a native Swedish speaker, I find the common identification of "anxiety" and "ångest" a little strange, because of the strong existential connotations of the latter word... But it's interesting how McLuhan insinuates a connection between angst in the existential sense and this spatial displacement of the nervous system. By the way, the quote is from his essay "The Agenbite of Outwit". http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_2art6.htm http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/mcluhan-studies/v1_iss2/1_...

diskcat 11y ago

A book is also an extension of the mind.

melling 11y ago
Paper notebooks might be. http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/inside-leonardo-s-notebook.html http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/art/inside-leona... The cell phone, etc will be a much bigger extension. However, we still need better ways to input, organize and access the information. Handwritten notes, voice memos, pictures, drawings, unstructured and structured data, etc. Cortana/Siri with hand tracking ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0 ) and a HoloLens will allow people to organize everything in creative ways.

amelius 11y ago

s/iPhone/smartphone/g

jsprogrammer 11y ago

>If that is the sole, correct framing of the issue, then society faces a simple question of how to interpret existing statutes in light of constitutional constraints. It is not the sole framing, nor is it correct. The order is not to weaken the encryption scheme, but to override the kill switch, on a specific phone, that will disable the device if too many incorrect login attempts are made.

zaroth 11y ago
The core security of any password based encryption is the means to slow or prevent brute force attacks on the password. Weakening the PBKDF to make brute forcing possible is exactly the definition of weakening the scheme. There are at least 9 phones they want this on today, and other sources have "hundreds" more. So you can say they want to do this on "any specific" phone, but I hope we're well past debating this as if we're talking about a single phone ever. I couldn't be happier with yesterday's ruling denying the government motion to compel using AWA in a similar case. I think we can see the forest for the trees in these case and should have an honest debate about how much police should be able to control the software on our devices, without trying to skirt the issue by tying it to a particularly haneous crime. I'm convinced and I believe it's well understood and settled that if AWA works the way the Fed wants in a specific case, it works in every single investigation, regardless of the brand of device or type of software. Magistrate Judge Orenstein certainly saw it that way.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  An encryption scheme should not be weakenable after the physical medium has been compromised. An encryption scheme is purely a feature of the data, not of the device. An encryption scheme should only be susceptible to brute force attacks and Apple is not being asked to perform a brute force attack, but rather, to deactivate their kill switch. If you read the order, the software to deactivate the kill switch is only supposed to work with one particular iPhone and Apple is under no obligation to deliver that software to anyone; they are only required to provide access to the device without fear of the kill switch.

Zikes 11y ago

How many old laws do we now lament for their lack of foresight or for having been written in a time well before technology like today's could have even been imagined? Here we have the opportunity to do the opposite. It is inevitable, given the trends in technology, that we will someday be able to directly integrate computing devices into our minds in some way. Perhaps we would use them to store memories themselves, or offload the processing of difficult thoughts or problems. It's hard to say, but if you can imagine controlling a smartphone or computer with only your mind then it's not too hard to imagine all the other potential uses. We have the opportunity to get it right, here and now. Let's not waste it.

sandworm101 11y ago

>> The FBI isn’t asking to access an uncrackable safe. It wants to compromise the boundaries of the self. No. These are phones, not implants. The FBI wants to crack encryption, not skulls. Anyone who equates access to phones with scifi mind scanning needs perspective. If you find your meat self indistinguishable from your "networked self" then you need to get out of the matrix once and a while. Some of us, I think most of us, still have internal and interpersonal lives that are not shared with our devices. >> There is no reason to allow corporate access to our minds while vigorously denying state access. Yes there is. A corporation doesn't have access to weaponized drones (at least not yet;). A corporation doesn't want to kill its customers. It wants them happy and spending. On the other hand, governments often want and do kill. A government does not necessarily want its people happy. Therefore, data in the hands of corporations is a very different scenario than data in the hand of government. They should not be equated.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> A corporation doesn't have access to weaponized drones (at least not yet;). Wrong. There are corporate weaponized drones already, and lobbying in favor of private (individual and corporate) armed drones in the US. [0][1] > A corporation doesn't want to kill its customers. Competitors, protestors, and disaffected workers, OTOH... [0] http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29182/the-skunk-drone-is-coming/ http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29182/the-skunk-d... [1] http://executivelp.com/laws-regulations/why-tennessee-should-not-ban-weaponized-drones/ http://executivelp.com/laws-regulations/why-tennessee-should...
sithadmin 11y ago
>Some of us, I think most of us, still have internal and interpersonal lives that are not shared with our devices. I'm having difficulty thinking of a single part of my life that isn't shared with my devices. My smartphone can be used to discover where I am at any given time, and where I probably was at any given time. Reasonable guesses about my state of mind and stream of thoughts could be constructed from my search history on the device. It can access any and all of my personal documents, photos, and financial information. It provides access to a matrix of nearly all of my social and professional contacts, and a fair bit of history regarding my current and historical interactions with them. It provides access to entry and exit logs for the doors and windows in my home, recordings of all persons approaching or entering its doors, and even logs about which lights I turn on and when. Most noteworthy is that the information above is almost certainly of higher quality and breadth than anything law enforcement previously (in a pre-digital age) could have assembled on their own.

wahsd 11y ago

There we go! I've been waiting about at least 5 years for someone to write this up. It needs to be carried a little further and the current circumstances will determine what the future holds, but I'm just glad this has been put out. It will become interesting once the "mind reading" technologies become more accurate though. What happens when you can read someone's mind in passing to, e.g., call their pin that has been established as protected under the Constitution. Look for wire mesh balaclava fashions in the future.

eternalban 11y ago

I see these poor young zombies in the street stupefied by their 'smart' digital pacifiers and thank heavens I quickly weaned myself off and back to using just a plain jane phone.

mbrock 11y ago
What makes you think they're "zombies" or "stupefied"?
- danharaj 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_asymmetric_insight
- eternalban 11y ago
  Daily slaloms around situationally unaware/uncaring moving bodies in street crossings, subway egress zones, ... Remember kids, this flower of your youth is precious precious precious. Do not waste it glued to a screen.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    They're probably just talking with their friends. How is that more of a waste of youth than going around staring at the pavement? If they were zombies they wouldn't be bumping accidentally into you on the sidewalk. They'd be trying to eat your flesh or something.
  - Zikes 11y ago
    Darn kids these days, with their automocars and compuwhatsits. It's a darn shame they'll never know real life, shoveling horse dung and plowing the fields, like humans were meant to live.

rqebmm 11y ago

According to the author communication of information to a 3rd party, either another person, or a smartphone, or a pad of paper, is all an "extension of the mind". This premise equivocates the contents of a device, to the contents of a computer to a persons spoken and written word. To me this all makes sense that a repository of information that was communicated from one's mind can be considered an "extension" of it. He then posits the money question "How much of ourselves should we give over to the state?" However, it's a huge leap to treat this like a new issue. Humans have been storing mental processes with 3rd parties since the literal beginning of history, and storing them with non-human parties since literally the first written word. This necessarily existed before the "state" in any sense (as a state requires laws, which have to be somehow commuincated.) This means that this debate has been ongoing since literally the beginning of governments. How/why/when/where the state handles spoken conversations vs written records vs computer records are concepts that have been fairly well established in both US and international law. People certainly hold varying viewpoints, but to contextualize that debate as new because of recent technological advances or the latest news seems clickbaity.

Chefkoochooloo 11y ago

I find the argument that the phone is an "extension of the mind" to be really interesting. If you think about it, doesn't our phone track our behaviors, suggest words when texting, etc.? Our phones are with us almost every single second of the day and we use these phones and store massive amounts of private and personal data and should we be forced to give over that data when forced to? I do not know the answer to this but this opens up the doors for conversations we need to have in such a fast-paced technology world.