A couple of recent news stories have provided a clearer vision of how technology is changing our future.

Elon Musk's Neuralink announced the successful completion of its first human brain implant surgery, a significant milestone after years of experiments on chimpanzees. This development marks a remarkable, even unsettling, step towards the direct fusion of human bodies and technology, allowing individuals to control digital devices through thought alone. This attempt to merge with the unknown realm of human intelligence is particularly noteworthy. Meanwhile, Apple's Vision Pro, a mixed reality headset, has launched in Apple Stores across the United States, prompting a flood of user reviews. Joanna Stern, a personal technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, published a 24-hour review of the device after using it in a ski lodge where she could escape family distractions, calling it a painful but insightful experience.

Both pieces of news represent significant steps forward, marking the first attempts and advances in achieving the goal of widespread commercialization within their respective fields. However, when considering our existence in the context of life, from our birth to our death, these developments highlight a shift, a 'physical extension' that could create a new trajectory unlike anything we've experienced before. This calls for reflection and contemplation on their implications and the potential for complementary approaches going forward.

In 2004, Bruno Latour, a philosopher of science, argued in his paper "How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies" that future questions about the body hinge on defining what science itself is. In other words, he expressed concerns about the distortion of our understanding of the body as a fundamental aspect of human nature if we allow science to define itself in a way that automatically leads us from talk about the body to physiology and, ultimately, medicine. He argued that we should view the body not simply as a passive material receptacle for the experiencing mind but as a dynamic interface that actively interacts with the world, the environment, and tools, expressing, measuring, and comparing. Latour's theory provides us with a conceptual framework for understanding the role of the body in the face of technology, proposing both an internalized, asymmetrical approach and a network- connected, symmetrical approach. This theory provides a clue about the concretization of the goal of 'physical extension', which both Neuralink and Apple's Vision Pro aim to achieve. In recent years, while working on projects related to pain, health, style, and drinking habits, I've observed two common patterns in how people relate to their bodies.

Firstly, the experiences people confirm through their bodies in daily life are subjective, internal, and difficult to understand. The body is seen as a passive support, often maintaining a 'loose tension' relationship. People confronted with situations that require constant management, such as sudden hypertension or a cancer diagnosis, initially experience shock or remain in a tense state, focusing on recovery, and eventually tend to revert to the familiar relationship they had with their bodies before. Although they become more sensitive to symbolic signs, their perspective of the body as a passive vessel remains. This asymmetrical relationship between the individual and the body represents both an opportunity and a direction for digital tools to help individuals measure their concrete experiences and compare them with others.

Secondly, people perceive differences in their physical experiences based on external environments and tools. For example, they may experience shame or guilt when attempting to walk on all fours in public to alleviate the tension in their stiff back muscles. Similarly, they may express embarrassment or regret about the emergence of age-related signs like facial wrinkles, a protruding belly, neck lines, and hair loss, as they are outwardly noticeable and indicative of the impact of their past continuous and voluntary efforts in managing their bodies. This symmetrical relationship, connected through an external network, provides individuals with an opportunity to recognize and express differences that hold meaning for them through digital tools or technologies.

Beyond the role of clothing appropriate for each situation, tattoos have become commonplace as a means of expressing meaning and value through the body. Now, we are witnessing attempts to achieve further physical extension by incorporating technological tools within and outside the body. Do we fear our bodies? Or what are we trying to achieve through them? Perhaps this is the time to find a more authentic way of life through our imperfect bodies.

References

Apple's Vision Pro Finally Launched, Unlike iPhone Release

A Computer in the Brain… Musk's Neuralink Successfully Implants Chip

I Spent 24 Hours Wearing Apple’s Vision Pro Headset | WSJ

How to Talk About the Body? The Normative Dimension of Science Studies