Abstract

This chapter presents an excerpt from Natural Born Cyborgs, which argues that we are already seamlessly interwoven with technologies around us and that the path toward becoming cyborgs does not lead us to become essentially different than we are. Human minds are already both computational and integrated with the larger technological world around us. Such is our cyborg nature. The idea of human cognition as subsisting in a hybrid, extended architecture remains vastly under‐appreciated. We need to understand in detail how brains like ours dovetail their problem‐solving activities to additional resources, and how the larger systems thus created operate, change, and evolve. In addition, we need to understand that the very ideas of minds and persons are not limited to the biological skin‐bag, and that our sense of self, place, and potential are all malleable constructs ready to expand, change, or contract at surprisingly short notice.