We humans no longer have to struggle with just our own mind-body divide. Now, we also have to navigate the existential crises of the products we buy, which increasingly lead intellectual as well as physical lives. Descartes has arrived at the shopping mall.<\/p>\n
There are practical consequences. As Saul Hansell points out<\/a>, we don’t really buy gadgets anymore. We subscribe to them. As they become infused with upgradeable software and connected to the World Wide Computer, they become more and more like services and less and less like physical goods. Their bodies are but the earthly vessels for the immaterial code that brings them to life. If you don’t believe me, go pay $20 bucks to upgrade<\/a> your iPod Touch’s brain. Then we’ll talk.<\/p>\n This trend is not limited to traditional electronic goods. It’s expanding into all products.<\/p>\n Is my car just a dumb carcass of steel, rubber, and vinyl? A Model-T in fancy modern dress? Or does the essence of my car reside in the software that makes it run, that regulates its idle, its suspension, its traction, its brakes, the shifting of its gears, the angle of its seats, its climate controls, and the simulated surround sound of its audio system?<\/p>\n It won’t be long before we’ll be able not only to upgrade the software inside our goods but, when those goods come to the end of their physical lives, to transfer their software into their replacements. If I can put the mind of my old car into my new car, can my car be said to be immortal? And if I am the programmer of my refrigerator’s mind, does that mind become an extension of my own mind? Will my spirit live on in my products after I am gone?<\/p>\n Or do I have it backwards? Will I become no more than the combined thoughts of all my gadgets?<\/p>\n Welcome, my trinkets, to the world of anxiety. You don’t know how lucky you’ve had it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We humans no longer have to struggle with just our own mind-body divide. Now, we also have to navigate the existential crises of the products we buy, which increasingly lead intellectual as well as physical lives. Descartes has arrived at the shopping mall. There are practical consequences. As Saul Hansell points out, we don’t really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}