Page 8 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

8
tool used as an extension of the human body or brain. That’s why we first mention mechanical extensions such as a bicycle that is, in reality, ‘an extension’ of the legs; or a digger that ‘extends’ the arms, shoulders and hands or this very text which, read on a screen or paper, is an ‘exten- sion’ of my voice. This manner of understanding mediums allows us to think of them as part of ourselves rather than as independent from us. When we get into a car, it ceases to be what it
is and turns into a new kind of cyborg. We are and will continue to be a species of transformers. And if we talk about cities and the planet, the mediums that turn us into amplified humans when connected to us have the same effect on groups, neighborhoods, cities, countries and the planet as on an individual.
The arrival of electronic devices and their enthusiastic adoption by the majority of the population has increased the capacity to assimilate external data, thanks to new extensions of our senses.
McLuhan correctly differentiated mechanical mediums such as the car and factories that help us to concentrate resources and people, break down processes and centralize decision making, from electronic mediums such as the telephone that facilitate the devolution of resources and people, the integration of processes and dele- gation when it comes to taking decisions. But in the Canadian professor’s era, there was only the merest glimpse of the significant digital revolu- tion that would follow the electronic era.
This ‘nervous system’ that we are deploying from our homes and pockets would amount to nothing if it weren’t for an important system of receptors, such as the human being owns.
We are sensors with amplified senses
Traditionally, as the whole world knows, humans have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch and
taste. Each of the senses consists of specialized cells that have receivers for specific stimuli. But as well as these five senses, we also have a sense of balance, of pressure, of temperature, and of pain and movement that function through the coordination of multiple sensorial organs. The sense of balance, for example, is maintained by
a complex interaction between sight, sensors in the body affected by gravity and which stretch the sensors in the muscles, skin and joints, as well as the vestibular system in the inner ear and, of course, the central nervous system itself. We also have another sense that allows us to be aware
of our movements and of the position different parts of our body occupy in space. In short, the human being is in himself a big sensor or, in other words, an assembly of sophisticated sensors that allow our brain to relentlessly process a vast amount of information from the outside world.
The arrival of electronic devices and, above
all, their enthusiastic adoption by the majority
of the population has not been done without increasing the capacity to assimilate external data, thanks to new extensions of our senses. A telephone could appear at first glance to be no more than an extension of our hearing system but it is much more. Apple telephones, for example, as well as having a central processing capacity, also have the co-processor M7 in the iPhone 5 which can gather sensory data. A cell phone from the start of the 21st century has more than 20 different sensors. Just to mention a few of the most relevant, the simplest phone now has an accelerometer enabling us to know the position of the device in space and whether the phone has been displaced and at what speed and in what direction; it also has a gyroscope, which measures the rotation of the device diagonally and which, together with the accelerometer, detects changes in the position of the device in six axes, which allows some to almost become
a sword simulator. Naturally, any cell phone will have a sensor that detects the intensity of the light and adjusts the brightness of the screen accordingly. The most advanced telephones can even recognize the different colors of lights. But
THE NEW CONNECTED CITIES AND CULTURE · MARIO TASCÓN
Digital Trends in Culture