Nov 03 2007
Of Metacortices and Exocortices
A few people have been curious about the meaning of the word metacortex after seeing it here on the blog. I saw a column today by David Brooks on the New York Times that probably does as good a job as anything in giving an intuitive feel of the evolving concept of an exocortex.
Vinge, the originator of at least the term Singularity, if not the concept itself, has proposed 3 main routes to a technological singularity. One route is by the development of a smarter-than-human artificial intelligence. A second route is by the genetic enhancement of human intelligence to above current human maximum. But a third route Vinge proposes is through human augmentation, a man-machine cybernetic merger. In the NYT article I referred to earlier, you can get a feel for what he is talking about, of how technologies such as GPS auto navigation systems along with calculators, iPods, BlackBerries and other devices provide many of the functions of a cortical memory in an externally stored and accessed form. Now I don’t know if a technological singularity is really in our future or not, but one must admit that people do have a point with these observations of the trends we are seeing today. Our information technology devices and systems are greatly enhancing our memory capacities and practical functionality in many interesting and unforeseen ways. And this is happening today, right now, and it is not our children but we who are participating in this transformation.
Metacortices and Exocortices (from Wikipedia ): Though etymologically similar, the two are quite different — the former, in effect, being composed in various ways of the latter. An EXOcortex can best be described as the portion of a trans- or posthuman entity’s brain (or cortex) which exists outside of that entity’s primary computing structure, usually the brain inhabiting a person’s “meatbody.” For example, a person’s exocortex could very well be composed of all the external memory modules, processor, and devices that the person’s biological brain interacts with on a realtime basis, thereby in effect making those external devices a functional part of the individual’s “mind.” A METAcortex, on the other hand, is a processing construction built entirely out of the connections between other processing constructions — a sort of “higher brain” composed of lesser brains, all of which contribute to its functionality.